January is an unbridled shit-shower that defecates all over the brilliance of your effulgent existence and drags your life into an unhappy and dreary, dark mire which you are unhappily forced to tolerate.

Yet January needs a chance. January isn’t so different from other months, after all. Your life sucked in November and it still sucks in January; December merely offered false hope of a better life that you thought for a fleeting second you could lead. You couldn’t. You are still fundamentally just as crap as you were, only a little poorer and now with clothes vouchers in difficult amounts for shops you don’t like from distant relatives who felt too awkward to get you anything else. December is a liar. January is just the ice-cold mirror after the steamy massage of that month. You felt better in December, certainly, but really it was just a brief let-up from the unbearable crap-ness that consumes your life, year upon painfully unbearable repetitive year.

What’s more, you spent too much in December. You’re poor now and you’re blaming January for feeling poor. Why? It was December that made you spend all that money. December’s the little gremlin who said “spend spend spend!” and then ran off shrieking with your credit card bill as January stepped forward, teary-eyed and downtrodden, to take another year of chastisement for having let you be so supremely profligate.

In fact January is super. You cut back in January, and if you spent that little all year, you’d be far richer. You could have a holiday, or just less overdraft. It applies to food, too. Think about how much you ate in December. Horrendous, no? So you detox in January. Still, though, instead of crediting January with slimming you down, you just stay angry at it for having been fat when it started.

I’m not angry at January. January brings me more of the same. I am still single, still slightly overweight and still socially uneasy. I still miss a patch when I shave and still can’t engage with the opposite sex. So? At least January is honest with me. It’s ice-cold when it looks at me and says: you’re crap. December, meanwhile, is dancing away dressed in Christmas lights with the rest of my student loan.

So don’t hate this month, since in reality this is the best you’ll feel all year. Feeling inadequate and alone? Nothing compared to how lonely and inadequate you’ll feel after three more months in March. Worried about your finances? Please, a loan has just come through. Imagine February. Perk yourself up by remembering; the worst is always yet to come.

New Year New You, right? Wrong. The girl or guy you’ve held that crush on for months in one of your seminars? Not a chance. They’ve a partner who is in every way superior to you.

Have a crap year.