Here’s February!

The best cure for the January blues is February!

I used to have a love hate relationship with February. To me the only redeeming quality of February was Valentine’s Day, my birthday and the occasional excitement of Leap Year. Let’s be honest, in the north – February is a bitterly cold month and I spent most of my young life complaining about it. But not any more. I love February! And here’s why.

It’s called January. Now January is a month that we can’t wait to get here. We prepare and plan the entire month of December for it’s arrival; we count it down on New Year’s Eve wearing new clothes, shoes, champagne, and we party all night!  How festive. Then halfway through the month it we are begging for it to be over.

In my experience there are two types of people who look forward to anything in January beyond New Year’s Day.

The first group are people who were born in January and there are many famous January babies: Elvis Presley, Martin Luther King Jr, Oprah Winfrey, Wayne Gretzky, Sarah McLachlan, Virginia Woolf, Justin Timberlake, Alicia Keys, J.R.R. Tolkien, Paul Newman, Mikhail Baryshnikov and Jack Nicklaus to name a few. These people are super human achievers with a level of success that sets them apart from the rest of us mortals.

I’m guessing being born in January had something to do with it. Sort of like the expression about New York; “If you can make it here you can make it anywhere.” Well if you are born in January I believe it makes you strong and you can overcome or accomplish anything!

The second group is smart people with plane tickets to a tropic island. You know the type; they walk around with grin and you can’t figure out why until they ask you to water their plants while they are in Maui. These people are my heroes.

The rest of us for some reason get depressed, we get sick, or cranky and uninspired. Invariably we hear “You’ve got the January Blues” “Nothing to do but ride it out”. Anything that goes wrong is promptly followed by “It’s January – these things happen in January” We all agree and comfort each other while we ride out the misery of January.

Then all of a sudden February appears and we get energetic and happy! Not sure why but all I know is it is NOT January and that’s good enough.                                                    Groundhog Day

So is that because February is so great or January is so bad? A January baby wouldn’t say so.

But right now, I’m over the flu and I’m in action. I’m smiling and full of optimism, my plans are coming together, ideas becoming concrete, people around me are happy, and I’m happy.

Ahhh the wisdom of February, the month of love and all things not January.