The way I see it, midwinter is no time to be ambitious. Especially after the holidays. I don’t necessarily suffer from post-holiday depression, but my motivation, usually pretty low as it is, takes a bit of a dip, and it’s a little harder to attack those big projects I’ve got lined up. Or even the little ones, like “make the bed” or “go grocery shopping.” For me and most other people I know, the stretch beginning on New Year’s and lasting pretty much until Saint Patrick’s Day is kind of a long, slow, dull one. Let’s face it: This will not be an exciting time. There are no major holidays (except for the token federal ones [MLK Day, Presidents’ Day—and I don’t think the average American even knows when those are (FYI, respectively, 1/15 and the third Monday of February [2/20 this year])] and then the divisive and often-disastrous Valentine’s Day. You’re not going on any great vacations, unless you’re the lucky and often-loathed subset of the population going on spring break. You’re not going to any weddings. It’s not a good time for music, either. There might be some good shows coming up, since some bands are nuts enough to try and tour in the winter, but even then you’re going to have to drive to the venue and tromp through the snow and wait in the freezing cold in the will-call line (I’m just projecting a worst-case scenario here, because that’s the kind of guy I am). And unless their label makes them, bands don’t generally release new albums this year. This is a terrible time of year to release new albums, since people’s disposable income is all tapped out from Christmas, and touring behind the album means going on tour in the winter, which see above, and your album is going to have to be not just good but pretty goddamn memorable to make it on anyone’s best-of-the-year list ten or eleven months hence. (Much of this applies to new movies, as well.) Most people’s social lives seem to take a hit around this time, too. There are fewer parties, since most people are all holiday-partied-out and a lot of them have New-Year’s-resolved to drink less or quit drinking altogether, which good luck on that one, folks. Do people generally fall in love during the first three months of the year? The answer is no, no they do not. They hook up in the autumn or the spring, when the weather is poetic and befits their newfound smittenness. Ask around, do some research: how many of your friends began relationships in January? February? It’s unheard of. People don’t hook up during this time, they break up. In general, people don’t socialize much or congregate in large groups during this time, unless they’re forced to. I think you’ll notice that people look for pretty much any excuse to get together in social situations. To wit: I’m not a football fan, to the extent that saying “I’m not a football fan” seems like a vast understatment, but I fucking love Super Bowl parties, if only because they provide everyone with a nice Sunday-night group social activity (and if Sunday nights in general are depressing, Sunday nights in winter are just plain cruel), an Event they can put on their otherwise barren social calendars. (This sort of applies to the Oscars as well, though they occur a bit later in the year and usually leave me feeling slightly nauseous and/or incontinent.) So, what does that leave us? No concerts, holidays, weddings, new albums, burgeoning love affairs, or parties. This time of year forces us to lower our standards a little, be content with a little less. The last few years, this has proven to be a great time for catching up on my Netflix queue and my reading. You have to just resign yourself to—nay, embrace the idea of staying inside at night and being antisocial. There are certain things you can do while shut up inside that are technically fun, like American Idol drinking games or stoned Trivial Pursuit marathons. Or, if you’re in college for whatever reason, and you want to feel conscientious, you could do your homework, I guess. If that’s your thing. If you’re Four Tet or Hrvatski, you could maybe hunker down with your laptop and whip us up a new album by springtime. If you’re not lame, you could throw a party anyway, and probably more people would show up because they don’t anything better to do. If you’re me, you could finally get off your ass and write something substantive that’s longer than five thousand words, like you’ve been telling yourself you’re going to do for a month now, since that’s ostensibly your whole raison d’etre here, but that would probably require actually getting up early instead of setting the alarm for some ambitious time and then when it goes off hitting snooze or just turning it off completely and falling back into a deep sleep for several more hours because, let’s face it, all your classes are solidly in the late afternoon/early evening portion of the day, and it’s a productive afternoon if you can manage to accomplish even a third of your to-do list, which today might be as modest as watching last night’s BitTorrented “Daily Show” and using Froogle to order an ergonomic keyboard/mouse combo (because despite your aforementioned underambitious and nonrigorous writing regimen and output, apparently you’ve managed to develop carpal tunnel syndrome and your doctor has recommended “typing less” [a boffo recommendation, that] and you now wear a wrist brace to bed at night [whose technical name is a "cock-up splint" (which is almost so hilarious that it seems like it's trying too hard)]). If you’re not me, Kieran Hebden, or Keith Fullerton Whitman, maybe some of this applies anyway. For now, however, I’m going to make the bed, go grocery shopping (some standouts on the list include “hand soap,” “laundry detergent,” and “new Brita filter,” none of which are technically groceries, but above all some decent coffee, since my only NY resolution was the [extremely unambitious, I'll be the first to admit, but almost too cute a synecdoche of the theme of this whole thing, here, for its own good] resolution to start drinking my coffee black, which means whatever coffee I’m drinking had better be pretty goddamn good since I can’t just trick it out with sugar and cream like I did in my previous, non-black-coffee-drinking life), and then a little later I’m going to go to JetSet to see friends I haven’t seen in nearly a month and who unironically ask me “what [I'm] working on now,” and hopefully Andrew will buy me shots like he usually does, and I’ll pretend to protest but then do them anyway, because that’s the kind of guy I am.