January has a way of quieting everything. Not just sound, but intention. Today the cold has settled in deeply, the kind that presses against the house and asks nothing more of it than endurance. Snow continues to fall, the temperature continues to drop, and the world outside seems content to remain unfinished. Inside, the house is still. There is no movement that matters.
My cats move in and out of the room, unhurried and unconcerned. They pause on my lap for warmth, stay just long enough to be felt, then drift away. Their presence does not interrupt the silence; it completes it. Sitting here with them, I am struck by how closely this day mirrors my internal state. I feel listless, unsure what to do with myself. I read for a while. I play with the cats. I watch something random or lose an hour to a game. None of it feels urgent. None of it feels wrong.
I keep returning to Seated Man with Cat on His Lap (1919) by M. C. Escher. What draws me in is not the subject so much as the lines. They are dense, repetitive, and restraining. The man is held together and held in place by them. There is no sense of motion or narrative progression. Time does not advance in this image; it lingers. That is exactly how today feels. Not restful in a celebratory way, but suspended. Quiet without being peaceful.
Often, movement substitutes for relationships in my life. Work, travel, projects. Forward motion has long been easier than intimacy. I do not have many close friendships, and while I share so much of myself in writing, I do so at a controlled distance. What remains private is not information, but exposure. Writing allows me to be seen without having to wait for a response. Dating and hiring committees do not offer that protection.
Being home today with my cats feels like a salve I did not know I needed. Work, lately, has been a reminder of how easily worth can feel conditional. Despite strong credentials and experience, interviews remain elusive. It echoes an earlier moment in my life, after being let go from a middle school position in 2010, when I applied to dozens of jobs and received only one interview. Then, the fear was economic. Now, it is existential. The sense of being unwanted has returned, stripped of urgency but heavy with implication.
My lack of success in dating and my stalled professional advancement feel intertwined, forming an unkind narrative about how I am perceived in middle age. Undesirable. Arrogant. Tactless. Difficult. I tell myself that at least some of it must be true. Evidence, after all, accumulates. And once that protective shell cracks, it is tempting to believe the worst. It's tempting to believe that what is revealed beneath is spoiled beyond repair.
Yet today resists that conclusion. The snow does not judge its own stillness. The cats do not require me to perform, impress, or justify myself. They respond only to warmth and presence. In Escher’s image, the man does not look fulfilled, but he remains in relation to something living, breathing, and real. There is dignity in that, even if it is quiet and unacknowledged.
This day exists on a different register than my normal life. It does not demand productivity or progress. It does not offer answers. It simply allows me to sit, to feel the weight of the cold and the silence, and to acknowledge the ache without rushing to resolve it. Perhaps that is enough for January. Perhaps meaning does not always arrive through movement. Sometimes it settles briefly, like a cat on my lap, and leaves behind the reminder that being held, even imperfectly, still counts.