CHRISTMAS is over, New Year’s is over.

Now we are left with a plain ol’ January to trudge through, and after all the festivities and joy that surrounds the festive season… January can seem like a gaping black abyss.

After all the build up, all the gift buying, all the cake, all the Christmas movies and all the warmth; it’s just over again for another year. The constant stream of storms hasn’t been helming us all back on our feet either.

I personally don’t love this time of year, because, even though we are hardly a week in, the new year’s optimism wears off pretty quickly, clearly, considering the slightly depressive tone of this article and all.

But don’t worry, I won’t simply curl up in a cocoon of the closest fuzzy blanket and hibernate until the next rays of sunshine peek through. As appealing as that sounds and all, I’m going to try and set myself goals.

I’m not talking the new year fuelled kind of goals but more like aims and dates. Little things to look forward to that are coming up.

Best thing that you can do for yourself is download a little app called countdown. Then key in all the things that you have to look forward to this year.

Let’s say that you’re going to the Justin Bieber concert in the Summer (I’m very jealous), then put that one in. It will tell you the amount of days, hours, minutes and seconds until you get to go.

I have already put in all of the events that are going on this year. Big ones like my birthday (58 days if you were wondering) and KFW (registration open now by the way) along with a few scheduled in trips away, are the main ones. But some of these are too far away to manage to pull me out of bed in the morning.

On those dark, grey mornings, you really need something pretty powerful to pry you out of bed. Then why not set countdowns to everything even remotely exciting in your life?

I’m sure that even the mathematically challenged can count down until Friday, but there is something particularly satisfying seeing the exact number of minutes and seconds left until freedom.

Maybe this countdown clock isn’t the best for the entire year as you may find yourself spending more time looking at the clock than actually living your life. But for this time of year I see absolutely nothing wrong with it, considering we only got 20 hours of sunshine for the duration of December.

And if people are wondering why you are so chirpy on these grey mornings, refer them to this article. Because I may have keyed in global domination as one of my goals for 2016 and I would hate to let my countdown calendar down…

Until Next Week,

Zoë