We are now a few weeks into the grimmest portion of the year. The holiday lights are coming down, and we’re left to cast about in cold and darkness like stranded mountaineers losing their last fire on Mt. Everest. Next comes two to four months of bitter winter as the splendor of the Holidays evaporates. If you’re looking for new routines and hobbies to occupy your time, here are a few suggestions:
Get Some Exercise
January is one of the busiest months in the gym world and you’re ready with resolutions to get as cut as Brad Pitt in Fight Club. Or Brad Pitt in Snatch. Or Brad Pitt in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Jesus, Brad Pitt is fit.
Anyway, the good news is that you won’t see more progress than you do in the first two months of an effective workout routine. That’s also the bad news. You’ll plateau and realize how much consistency and focus a healthy physique requires. You can either dedicate more time to the gym and your diet or convince yourself that it’s not really your thing because you’re more of an intellectual.
Alternatively, you may develop body dysmorphia and be perpetually unsatisfied with your gains, which will lead you into a toxic relationship with the gym, your diet, and your self-image. The coming summer beach days will fill you with dread as you consider downloading a Tor browser to purchase trenbolone from a dark web Russian merchant.
Set Work Goals
It’s Q1 and you’re ready to become a corporate alpha who does nothing but increase shareholder value. Use social media to post constantly about “The Grind”, along with pictures of characters from Peaky Blinders, The Sopranos, and Scarface with overlaid quotes from The Art of War. Alienate loved ones with a new domineering and abrasive attitude. Family doesn’t matter now because you’re 3,654th on the waitlist to get a base-model Tesla.
Share your goals with your boss, too. That way, when you end up losing your zeal and taking multiple 45-minute bathroom breaks per day, you’re not just letting yourself down, you’re letting them down too. And your company. And your family. Use the creeping but all-consuming dissatisfaction to fuel your budding alcoholism.
Read Philosophy
Reading is a great way to spend your leisure time, and it offers an active cognitive effort that will help your brain recover from the damage you’ve done by binge drinking on the weekends. I’m sure many of my readers have self-improvement resolutions on their agenda this year, and reading philosophy is a great way to jumpstart your motivation.
Choose three to five books to read from different authors with contrary perspectives. Immediately subscribe to whatever you’re reading and condescend to anyone’s argument to the contrary with half-remembered quotes from the book. Remember: it isn’t important to live out the lessons in the book, but you need to talk about it incessantly. When you finish one book, read the counterpoint, cast aside your previous worldview, and find a new way to bore strangers at parties.
Consider Self-Care
Get into a good self-care routine so you look and feel your best beneath the many layers you have to wear just to sit in your non-insulated apartment. Start a skincare routine to combat the seasonal dry skin and stop molting like a reptile. Sure, it’ll cost you hundreds of dollars that you can’t afford to spend, but, hey, if the United States of America can operate at a constant trillion-dollar deficit, what’s a few grand to you?
If you’re really broke, though, you can always just take long warm showers – nothing beats the cold like a steamy shower. Plus, there’s no deeper enjoyment than a refreshing shower beer (or five). While you’re in there, brood on past exes and dissect your deepest flaws and insecurities. No answers to the riddles of your heart will come and you’ll strongly consider adopting cats (if you’re female) or snakes (dudes rock).
Delve into Military History
Are you a male in your 20s-80s? Boy, do I have the subject matter for you. Nothing excites the male imagination quite like sex and war. You won’t be having any of the former, so let’s lean on the latter.
Learn about vaunted military exploits like Operation Barbarossa and daydream about fighting and dying in the twisted skeletons of Soviet cities like Stalingrad. Collect vintage military relics to decorate your bedroom (again, not like you’re getting laid, anyway), or purchase surplus military gear that will be the envy of all your male friends.
If you’re more interested in modern warfare, subscribe to an OSINT Discord server and watch the horrors of the war in Ukraine from the comfort of your couch! You’ll either realize that you’re a coward who could never be man enough to survive those conditions, or you’ll drift into delusion and constantly tell your friends that you totally could’ve been a US Marine if you hadn’t focused so much on “socializing” in college.
Watch Movies
Cinema offers some of the best storytelling mankind has ever created. Plus, the artsy films have a lot of tasteful nudity, and, as we mentioned before, you’re in a dry spell that rivals the 1920s Dust Bowl.
Make a list of classic and avant-garde films you want to see, set yourself up, and make it 30 minutes into a black-and-white foreign film before saying, “Screw this,” and rewatching the Pirates of the Caribbean series for the 10th time in your life. You only need to remember the titles of a few movies in the Criterion Collection to call yourself a film buff, anyway.
Learn New Recipes
There are many wonderful winter recipes to supply you with hearty and warm meals during the winter months. Plus, your culinary toolkit consists mostly of pasta dishes and DiGiorno pizzas. It’s time to expand your skillset – the DoorDash expenses are getting out of hand.
Invest in a slow cooker to whip up a filling comfort dish like chili! Or turkey chili. Or sweet potato chili. Or chili dogs. Really, just learn to make different renditions of chili. It will eradicate your gut biome and you’ll have to see a GI doctor, but, man, chili is really fucking good in the winter.
Take Walks
Walking is a simple but effective mind-clearing exercise. It’s especially useful if you work from home and feel like you’re crawling up the walls. Put in some headphones and listen to music, a podcast, or an audiobook. Or go au naturel and use the quiet time to work out problems in your life, enjoy the beauty of the natural world, or just relax and focus on putting one step in front of the other.
Just throw on some long johns and a snowproof exoskeleton, then head out into the barren tundra to get your steps in. If you didn’t like the cold before, you’re sure to hate it after walking in it for 30 minutes every day.
Allow the cold to reach deep into your body and fester into a sub-zero resentment that freezes you emotionally and physically. Dream of a day when you can put on shorts and a t-shirt to venture out, then crawl back home to wait a few months for the despotic weather conditions to let up. God, I can’t fucking wait.
Why the Long Face? 