January: A Month Stitched Together by Time & Ordinary Human Oddities

Another year older, another year wiser. Or so the old English idiom insists. I’m still waiting for the whole “wiser” part to start kicking in, perhaps it’s running fashionably late, like everything else in January.

This span of time, the one from Christmas to the end of January, always feels like it’s being stretched out like taffy. Pulled long, deliberately slow, as if the universe is trying not to snap it off too soon. It’s been three weeks since the clock struck midnight and declared it a New Year, and only four since we gathered around the Christmas tree. Yet somehow those moments feel like they belong to another era entirely. Another time, another place. 

Some people dread this month for that very reason, the way it seems to drag its feet through the snow. Today is really the 50th of January and we’re all just pretending not to notice. Or it could be that this is how time is supposed to feel when we’re not swept up in the glittering chaos of the holidays and all the deadlines. Maybe January is simply honest about its pace. 

"When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed doors that we do not see the one which has been opened for us." —Helen Keller

Time perception is a finicky thing. The more we try to pin it down, the more it slips through our fingers like water. Neuroscientists say our sense of time stretches or contracts depending on novelty, routine, emotion, and attention. When life is more predictable, with no landmark holidays or events — wake up, work, sleep, repeat — our brains compress the days into a neat little stack. But when we’re in uncharted waters, or when we’re waiting for something to change, time expands. It breathes. It sprawls its arms and legs out. It becomes January. 

And of course, this is the month when we’re told to reinvent ourselves. New hobbies, new habits, new goals, new fears to conquer, and all in the name of becoming our “truest” self. Or so the ad that flashed across my screen promised: New Year, Better You!

The truth is, there have always been lists of “better” ways to live. Shortcuts, biohacks, warnings, commandments. Humanity has been collecting them like merit badges since the dawn of consciousness. And riding alongside it? Fear, with its trusty sidekicks, doubt and insecurity, being used as tools to steer society every step of the way.

Buy this. Avoid that. Stay home. Stay safe. Stay small. But remember, we’re all in this together.  

The world out there is big, scary, messy, and unpredictable, so why not just experience it through a screen instead? 

It reminds me of Frankenstein’s Monster, no, not the bolt-necked cartoon, but the original creature, the one stitched together from the best intentions and the worst impulses of his creator. Victor Frankenstein didn’t stop to consider what he was actually making until it was already alive, already looking back at him. 

And only then did he feel the weight of his creation.

Sometimes I think we’re living in a similar moment. We’ve built systems, technologies, expectations, and pressures that now tower over us, loomingly, blinking awake. And in these especially long, quiet, stretched-out moments of January, we can just make out those tiny, barely audible whispers of self-doubt or second-guessing. Not to torment us, but to warn us. To remind us when we’re beginning to drift away from our original dream, or when we’re constructing something we may not fully understand, yet.

For me, one of the most unsettling parts of Frankenstein isn’t the creature at all. It’s Victor, the man who ran from his own creation, and the crowd that decided, without so much as a conversation, that anything unfamiliar must be dangerous. The poor creature barely had time to say “hello” before someone grabbed a pitchfork. 

It’s funny, in a slightly tragic way, how quickly humans can form a public consensus. One minute you’re minding your business, stitched together from metaphorical hopes and questionable decisions, and the next you’re being chased through the village because someone didn’t like your vibe. If that isn’t the modern internet experience, I don’t know what is.

"Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change." —Mary Shelley

Those self-defense mechanics of our survival instincts humming quietly away in the background, sorting people into two simple, yet effective, categories: 

People I know > People I don’t know who are outside of my circle of trust, thus, the enemy and shall be treated as such. 

“Well, I don’t know them. I don’t want to get to know them. So why should I be kind, warm, inviting?”

We’ve all thought it, even if we didn’t say it aloud. It’s those same pesky signals firing in the brain warning us to fear ‘them’, not any “one them” in particular, just a __fill in the blank__. 

Sometimes irrational. Sometimes inherited. Sometimes etched so deep it feels like part of our DNA.

That instinct can turn anyone, or anything, into a monster simply because it’s unfamiliar. 

But maybe that’s the lesson tucked inside Mary Shelley’s pages and inside January’s long, contemplative stretch. 

The monster was never the one who was curious, or lonely, or trying to figure out his place in the world. The monster was the fear that made everyone else recoil. The refusal to look closely. The instinct to judge before understanding.

And perhaps that’s why this month feels so elongated. January hands us a mirror, a slightly foggy one, sure, but a mirror nonetheless, and asks us to look at what we’ve built, what we’ve abandoned, and what we’ve misunderstood. It nudges us to consider whether we’re nurturing our creations or running from them. Whether we’re listening to the whispers of intuition or joining the mob with torches because it’s easier than asking questions.

In that sense, January isn’t a monster at all. It’s just the creature knocking gently at the door, hoping we’ll give it a chance before we panic.