It’s that special time of the year when people are asking themselves what to do about the social media accounts they’ve deactivated for the holidays.

‘Should I go back,’ they’re asking, ‘and if so when? Should it be soon or later or never?’ And they’re asking, late at night, ‘Should I announce that I’m back, and if so should I announce it sort of swaggeringly, or self-deprecatingly, or matter-of-factly? How irritating is each of these modes or do they all fall under the same banner of quite irritating?’ People don’t know the answers yet but they keep asking more questions, and they’ve got up from bed and they’re stomping around the room, maybe they’re dragging some furniture around, heedless of their downstairs neighbours who are actually trying to have a peaceful time sometimes. ‘Should I just slip back in without ceremony, like a smelly seal rolling back into the water before going to eat some molluscs? Would I prefer no one to remark on my re-entry, so that I can go about my business of complaining about buses and describing the times I lock myself out of places and retweeting certain posts that I think will reflect well on me, or will I secretly be hurt that no one has noticed my return and take out that hurt on people who post things about gratitude and home renovation or whose achievements I am jealous of? How long until I break into someone’s shed and steal their ride-on mower and drive through a fence? Will I apologise and say, “This was an important learning experience for me” or at 4a.m. will I find myself staring into my ravaged open palms while whispering, “I don’t know who I am anymore, or who I even was before all this”?’ And now people are walking around the neighbourhood at night, out there with the timid January fireworks, asking, ‘Will I be able to hold on to this new feeling of space, perhaps something close to peacefulness, or maybe it’s a vague empty confusion, inside my head, in a part that I wasn’t aware could feel space, or even anything, anymore – or will I watch the feeling steadily departing from me like the number 23 bus that the schedule board said was cancelled but apparently wasn’t? Does it matter if I no longer have that peacefulness, since in exchange I’ll have the gift of a platform where I’ll be exposed to many voices, as if standing naked while a chill wind blasts through the tunnel? What is peace to a person? Is it something about learning what to hold on to, and what to let go of? What if I can’t hold on? What if I can’t let go? What if my hands are on backwards, and they have tiny sieves where the fingers should be, and I’m letting go of all the things I should be holding on to, and there are strips of velcro in other places and they’re holding on to things I should let go? What other parts of me are on backwards –my brain? What is the exact nature of my wrongness and how visible is it to others? Am I having a flare of visible wrongness, like eczema, or am I managing it okay right now?’ It’s that time of year when people have finished their night walk and they’re back home now, and they’re searching for their door key in their pocket, but they can’t find it; it must have fallen through their sieve fingers and they’re locked out again, and it’s the time of year where they’re pulling a towel off the washing line and wrapping themselves up in it and curling up on the grass, with the bugs and the mosquitoes, and they’re being eaten alive, and a hedgehog is at the dark periphery of the garden, just waiting to visit them and shriek at their face before running away on its freakish long legs. And it’s that time of year when people are curling up a bit tighter outside on the lawn and asking, ‘What if the planet is an immense round cat, and I’m buried in its fur, like the princess carried on the white bear’s back in that fairytale “East of the Sun and West of the Moon”, and what if right now I’m being carried to an enchanted castle, and this roaring wind is actually the cat purring, or eating some wet food, and this is how I’ll be lulled to sleep.’ And they’re finally falling asleep, and they’re waking up stiffly at five in the morning, when the night is just newly deactivated, and they’re slowly standing and brushing the grassy bits off themselves, and they are feeling a surge of fresh and righteous anger because they are not in an enchanted castle, they’re on the lawn, and today is the day they are going to steal a ride-on mower, yes, it’s that time of the year where people are bracing themselves against a tide of unanswerable questions and also against the irresistible pull of mistakes, and today is the day they are going to drive through a fence.