January has become the most difficult part of the year. Full of optimism and rest from the holiday-high of the old year, I step off into the new and smack straight into a wall. The brisk autumn has turned damp, tedious. The dark is old and the cold bone deep. Light from the window hardly stretches to the back wall of the living room at midday, while moss sprouts on the hood and along the seams of the car. In these parts, it's five long months until the next paid holiday—six until you can confidently claim summer. The killer is the frenzied and vainglorious busywork that surges from the corporate vascularity as people resolve to advance their careers. If past years are any indicator of how this one will go, the volume of work won't relent until well into summer. It's a long bleak stretch.