January does as January does, and transforms me into a desiccated, misanthropic husk. Body and brain are torn between usual hormonal Hulk rage and something deeper, a throbbing growl against everyone I look at. My body is under enormous muscular tension as I continually hold back from screaming into the face of anyone foolish enough to try to talk to me; unfollowing people on Instagram helps; watching a lot of TV helps too, for a while, and then I am struck by the fact that I will never write anything this good, even when I’m watching the worst thing on Netflix, and that the only thing I have ever wanted to do is not something I’ll ever do well. 

I sit in the car in a school car park with two children in the back, waiting for a third, and try to cry, until one of the passengers asks what a kazoo is and my startlingly accurate impression halts my momentum. Another moment later, though, and I soundlessly succeed, and it is briefly satisfying.

Porridge has got into my brain, or reality, or both — my usual unearned confidence and optimism about my ability to develop as a writer has evaporated. I think of the writers I love, and realise that my writing is sludge, mediocre and thin-soup readable at best, boring and self-indulgent at worst. (The concept of #selfcare is making my blood fucking boil at the moment, in a larger-picture-way, but I have the creeping horrors that my writing is the literary equivalent of a Instagram make-sure-you’re-looking-after-you post.) I am jealous, but still happy, for those brilliant writers in my life who have found success; the fellow-mediocre — and worse — writers who have found the same just make me endlessly, crushingly sad. I miss the friends and family I do not see enough, and am having a teen-like grieving period for the fact that everything comes to an end. All of this is written horribly, clumsily. Even the dog has moved her regular lapdog position to the hot air vent in the floor, just to get away from my mood.  

But one of the children asks me how much it costs to get one’s ears pierced, and when I guess twenty pounds they say, ‘Twenty pounds! You should get an ear pierce and a hair cut and a sarcasm removal for that!’; and one child gives me a huge hug when they see me crying in the kitchen; and it is so nice when my roommate comes home at the end of the day; and I have some nice work on; and my mother is back from a six-week trip tomorrow; and even if I can’t write a good book, I have so very many to read. Some seed of optimism remains for the start of Spring.