‘The grey months’: Fran Whiting on why we’re all feeling a bit flat

Hello, I have a question for you today. Is anyone else feeling a bit … off? A bit discombobulated?

A happy blonde woman lies down on her sofa at home with a hot drink in her hand while looking out of her window. Her dog is lying next to her asleep. Ornaments and lights can be seen in the room.

Hello, I have a question for you today. Is anyone else feeling a bit … off? A bit discombobulated (one of my favourite words, by the way)?

I am, and I know quite a few other people who are too. If you are – and if it helps – I believe I know why.

This is a strange time of year; it’s not the beginning when we are full of hope and resolutions that we may or may not succeed in keeping, it’s not the middle where we can mark the halfway point, do a bit of letting go and a bit of moving forward, and it’s not the end where we can celebrate our best moments and raise a glass to those who helped us on the way.

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Instead it’s what my friend Marcie calls “the grey months”, and what I call the calendar equivalent of the biblical purgatory.

It is neither here nor there, it is not really anywhere, and yes, I do realise that I have just lapsed into Dr Seuss territory.

Frances Whiting. Picture: David Kelly

But it is, I believe, a longer version of the same feeling that descends between Boxing Day and New Year’s Eve, a feeling of treading water, of waiting for something to happen.

A reader wrote to me this week expressing this exact sort of feeling and asking if I ever felt this way, and what I did about it. To answer: yes I do, and here’s what I do.

Please send in your own suggestions for blowing the cobwebs away when you are stuck in limbo land without a stick.

● Put your best foot forward. Go for a walk – or a run if you are so inclined. It doesn’t have to be far, it doesn’t have to be fast, it just needs to get you out of the house and into the world to remind you that you are a part of it. As a friend of mine used to say to me, “The hardest part is putting on your sneakers.” And to be honest, the hills.

●Put your phone down. I know, I know. There’s a whole world of amusing cat videos to scroll through in there. But they’ll still be there when you get back from your walk (in fact there’ll be more).

●Put your togs/bathers/swimmers on (depending on which state you are reading this in). I don’t care how cold it is, you will feel much, much better, it will reset your system, recharge your battery and you will be able to say those immortal words that swimmers have smugly pronounced since the dawn of time: “It’s lovely once you get in.”

●Put on some music. Any kind. Your kind. The kind that makes you raise
your hands, stomp your feet, swing your hips and shake your groove thing. May
I recommend Deee-Lite’s Groove Is In The Heart, The Killers’ Mr Brightside
or New Order’s Blue Monday? May I
also recommend you draw the curtains?

●Put your nose in a book. Take some time out, curl up in a corner and escape. If it’s been a while, and you’re not sure what to read, pop down to your local library and ask for some recommendations. You will come away with a new library card, an armful of books, a new place to go and a world of possibilities between the pages.

Right, that’s about it.

I sincerely hope this list might help some of you, and I’m looking forward to your ideas.

Originally published as ‘The grey months’: Fran Whiting on why we’re all feeling a bit flat