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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
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Emma Beddington

Somehow, it is still January. Here are my nine wellness-free survival tips

A woman sitting on a sofa, clutching a mug and with a blanket over her head that totally obscures her face and most of her body
Cape of good hope … wear it everywhere. Photograph: ingwervanille/Getty Images

I don’t want to alarm anyone on this, the 95th day of January, but I have just realised that there are still almost two weeks before February starts. I don’t know about you, but the January 2025 time loop has broken me: my blood has become toxic ectoplasm and my bones are jelly worms. I don’t so much live the 43 minutes of daylight we get in North Yorkshire as sullenly, listlessly exist through them. This morning, putting on leggings to go to the gym defeated me, so I just lay on the bathroom floor instead.

This is not our first January rodeo – we have survived before; we will survive again. Last year, some idiot even tried to claim January was “sort of great” (yes, that idiot was me). But the coping strategies I have found online all seem rather worthy, rather preachy, rather “hello birds, hello sky”. So to expiate for last year’s idiocy, I have devised some better survival tips, none of which involve “spending time in nature”, “gentle stretching” or “nourishing soup”.

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