Day 70: Milk, Two Januarys

For many years now I have believed that I am allergic to January.  The evidence appears with unfailing  regularity. Chronic eye bags.  I look like I've had no sleep for forty-eight hours.  Permanently.  The same look that I get if I'm exposed to large amounts of dust (the loft, the back-up drinks cupboard, under the bed).  That's a dust allergy.  So this - the look that I get when I'm exposed to large amounts of January - must therefore be a January allergy.

I was on a job today, where my contact - completely randomly - started talking about sugar.  It's been eight weeks since she's given it up in all of the most overt forms (biscuits, cakes, in drinks) and in some of the more covert ones (white bread/pasta/rice).  She has lost weight (no surprises there), AND she no longer gets baggy eyes.  Interesting.  Because I don't usually tend to eat a huge amount of sugar.  Except at Christmas.  Booze, mince pies, chocolate, puddings - whatever's thrown at me (festive times call, literally, for feasting).   I've never connected it to the January eye-bags because they don't turn up until after New Year.  But that's probably exactly when you could expect to see the results of several weeks of hard sugar abuse; when my system can take no more, and mounts a active protest.   First week or so of January - still chugging through what's left over.   (Chocolate orange for breakfast? Why not? Practically fruit.)   So the bags stay around, like white flags being waved in submission, desperate to be noticed and acted upon.   Mid-Jan (around now) everything's back to normal food-wise, so the bags pack themselves up and retreat slowly.   By February they've gone.

It's a lot less interesting than being allergic to January.   But a lot more controllable.   Makes me wonder how often I choose to attribute the way I feel to something in the environment, something external to me.   Rather than recognising that so often it's the unconsidered but direct consequence of my own actions.   Both negative and positive.   Intellectually I'm well aware of this, but's it's so easy/lazy to disregard it.   If it's January, there's nothing I can do about it.   If it's sugar, there is...

In related news, the last piece of chocolate orange has left the building.   (Don't get the wrong impression. Eaten, not thrown away. Obviously.)