The last of the Christmas decorations have been boxed up and put away and the rapidly moulting tree was dragged off down to the recycling centre this morning.  The house now looks twice the size and impossibly, depressingly bare.

I was ready to scream if the tinsel and the baubles had stayed up one more night but predicably now they’re gone for another year I’m in the dumps.  It’s probably got a lot to do with the rather uncertain forcast for 2009 and the fact that I’m actually going to have to settle on one project to start on and just pray it earns some money.

Its a weird thing to be moaning about I know.  I might be temporarily lacking in steady employment but I’m not exactly short of avenues to explore.  The January cold and gloom though makes it feel like those times in the dim and distant past when the heating kept going off because you’d forgotten to pay the bill and you didn’t answer knocks at the door in case it was someone looking for money (yes I’m old enough to remember the days before Ireland became the land of milk and honey).

Rationally I know times have changed beyond recognition and I’m no longer an eighteen year old calling herself a writer when she got into conversations with other people in the queue for the Dole.  Now I actually am a writer and the book’s available in all good bookshops.  But sitting in the newly denuded living room with nothing much to do in the middle of the afternoon and no one to talk to but the cat, it really doesn’t feel any different.

I know there’s stuff I should be doing, emails I should be sending, phonecalls I should be making, but today January just got on top of me and optimism just seemed a stretch too far.  Tomorrow I’ll go round the bookshops, maybe sign some more copies (honestly it was my publisher’s idea, I’m not just a desperate meglomaniac) and rev myself myself up to the relentlessly cheerful state of mind that I usually manage to keep up until the leaves come back on the trees and I don’t have to fake it any more.

But some days were just meant to be bad and the cold, grey empty ones lend themselves to it easier than others.  The decorations are away and it’s time to start the new year for real…tomorrow.