This morning, as soon as our nanny arrived to take Hudson, I made my Friday march down to my basement office, wadded up a hoodie for a pillow, and decided to sleep on the floor.x No, I wasn’t booting up my computer and reviewing my incoming emails, but I felt like, through the absence of actual work, my proximity to work might be enough. Maeby, who is unaccustomed to me being quite so literally on her level, responded gamely—gamely in the sense that she flopped right beside me so her whiskers could twitch against my cheeks while we both tried to rest.

And though I didn’t really sleep, I lied there thinking for about 20 minutes about how this is exactly what I’ve been needing—a dark basement cave, warm whiskers, a wadded hoodie, and closed eyes.

Something happens to me in January. It’s a hybrid between metamorphosis and hibernating. The hibernating part of me is just enduring, but part of me hopes that I’m accidentally hibernating in a cocoon and will emerge on the other end of this as a butterfly or something.

I’m not blue, exactly. Just introverted. Excessively so. My emotional state is compositely normal, but having to meet with people does make me a touch grumpier than it normally would. I’m cruising on my 2021 page goals right now, in part because all I want to do is hibernate with a book and absorb the whole world.

And candidly, I’m reading literature that asks something of me, so maybe that’s why if feels like I have so little bandwidth for actual people that ask something of me too. My brain is so busy. It wears me out but it excites me too.

Does this happen to you? Periods of extended thinking and excessive introversion? January seems like the perfect month to hibernate into a butterfly.