New year.

2021 is over. It's 2022.

But now the celebrations and holidays are also over and as if by the flick of a switch, everything just gets back to the gunk of regular everydays. It always leaves me kind of disoriented and out of place. Yeah, the holidays are messy, rushed (despite stores bringing in the seasonal stuff sooner and sooner each year), stressful... A week long, yet always seem to whoosh by faster than expected, faster than one could prepare, no matter the plans or the time spent on it. It's over before you know it.

Then what? PLOP, back to the drab common times again. It already can be felt: the days are already getting lighter, already getting longer. The lights go. The ornaments go. From private dwellings, and even more so from public places, much if not all the decoration is gone on the 2nd or 3rd. There's no easing back into anything, really. The things set aside, put on temporary hold to prioritise private and personal aspects are all resumed. The special atmosphere is gone in the blink of an eye.

Anxious, scared about what those regular days bring again. The break is always nice but always so short. Gone before you realise it was even there, because you were busy stressing over food and relatives and visiting and schedules - and it's stress, but that is what it's all about. The whole rest of the year you don't pay as much attention to these things as you do during these few days.

Back to being alone - even if not being alone isn't a thing in general, there might be more of a subtle sense of closeness when so much of the world just stops and shuts down. Now it's just back to the dread and the deafening cosmic noise of loneliness.