New Year Blues

Well, the New Year is nearly a week old and it seems like a century! I've been struck by the sense of anticlimax that comes with the New Year. It leaves me feeling bored in spite of all the work to do, overwhelmed by the incredible distance between effort and reward. That distance may be as much as the ten minutes between putting on the kettle and drinking the cup of coffee, an unspeakably long time.

It hasn't been helped by the antics in Israel. I seem to find myself stuck on Al Jazeera watching rockets and explosions against the night sky, hypnotized by the pointlessness of it all.

The fact that we have all been hit by a persistent cold doesn't improve my frame of mind. The ache in my head and pain in my face cast a negative filter on everything. The weather is cold and damp, which makes me alternately homesick or SAD. And the bare house, stripped of it's cheerful tree, is just the icing on the cake.

Rereading the above makes me seem like a miserable old grouch. Perhaps I am...