In an increasingly banal, algorithmically driven world, where everything is starting to look the same - from coffee shops to people’s faces - I do my best to avoid cliché. When my time comes, my kids have a wealth of shortcomings to choose from for my epitaph. ‘Here lies our mother, foul-mouthed and inconsistent. Had no idea Japan was in the Second World War.’ But let it never be said I had the lyrics to Fix You tattooed across my lower back.

For this reason, I don’t buy into January bashing. Moaning about the weather and being skint is like that mate who starts proselytising after discovering endurance running in their forties. The chat gets old real quick.

That was Before. Lads, I can no longer defend January. This past month has been a shocker. The relentless rain. The relentless news cycle. A particularly gnarly bout of stomach flu only a 22-year relationship could endure.

The cat killed a mouse in the bedroom (the only thing greater than my fear of windowless bathrooms is my fear of mice) and the six-year-old agreed to dispose of the body in exchange for pizza and an episode of CrunchLabs. Palms were still warm from the handshake when he grabbed the corpse in his fist and tossed it into the compost, unfazed by the literal stench of death. His brother, meanwhile, was making swastikas out of Jenga blocks.

I was scammed by my ‘bank’, who called as I was admiring a Rodin in the Musée des Augustins. Did I happen to click on a link yesterday to confirm a parcel delivery? ‘Why, yes, as it happens. Am I not getting a package after all?’ (I should have known it was too good to be true. The last item of mail I received that wasn’t a bill or a charity asking for an increase in our monthly donation was a letter from my friend Mick, who wrote to tell us his wife was expecting a baby. I sent our congratulations eight months later. Three months on, I’m waiting for his reply. I feel we haven’t quite cracked this pen pal thing.)

The nice man from the bank said a criminal gang in Morocco had used my debit card to buy 1,000 euros worth of rugs on Alibaba.com, but fear not! The money could be retrieved. They just needed a few details. They’d call back on WhatsApp in case the fraudsters were listening in on the conversation. Luckily, Mr G intercepted before I could tell them where we lived.

We’ve had heavier stuff to deal with. While Mr G was back home for a family funeral, I hit a professional dry spell and went hard on the doomscrolling. I read about tech bro eugenics and societal collapse (fun fact: every complex civilisation generally falls within 250 to 300 years. Our post-industrial civilisation is now at 270 years.) I read about a romance novelist, who uses AI to crank out 200 novels year. ‘If I can generate a book in a day, and you need six months to write a book, who’s going to win the race?’ she told the New York Times. I read that men are particularly at risk of debasement when the AI revolution fully takes hold and I had a little cry over my sons’ bleak futures.

To escape the existential despair, I took refuge in Canadian small town drama Sullivan’s Crossing, binge watching two seasons in five days. They say nothing happens in Canada, but over the course of two weeks, there was an explosion at the diner, a malpractice lawsuit, a shooting, a rare ovarian tumour that caused neurological symptoms, Alzheimer's that turned out to be a vitamin deficiency, and the eponymous Sullivan’s Crossing was almost sold to a greedy developer, but at the eleventh hour, the local school pulled together with a jar of coins, raising the funds needed to save the campsite. Mr G came home to find our youngest screaming at the TV. ‘Why is Andrew kissing Maggie? I thought she was making a baby with Cal!’

This lapse in parenting snapped me out of my funk. It continues to rain - as I write, Storm Nils has knocked over the wheelie bin, making me question my dietary choices of late. But I’ve turned off the news, going old-school with my media consumption. I listen to the bulletin on the radio each morning and that’s it. As my friend Rach says, I’m getting out of my head and into my hands - I went to a workshop with a mum from school on Tuesday and made some risibly bad pottery. I wove friendship bracelets and cooked coq au vin yesterday with the boys. I reached out to an old client and landed a big copywriting gig. It’s for a bank, a real one that has no known links to criminal enterprises in north Africa. I’m about to start working with my editor on my new book, which I hope to be able to tell you more about soon. It could well be the last book I write if the naysayers are correct and collapse is imminent.

But I guess that’s the human story, right? The Bay of Pigs, Halley’s Comet, Y2K - the sky is always about to fall in at any given moment. We keep buggering on. I can’t stop AI taking over or Big Oil destroying the planet, but I can rebel in small ways, do what I can to push back against a culture that has flattened our interests and our looks, and made us docile consumers. I can continue to create, develop new skills, seek out novel experiences, allow my face to get old. It might be the beginning of a counter revolution. Or it might the beginning of the end.

As Chris Martin says, ‘If you never try, you'll never know.’

Ink that on my ass, bitches.

What I’ve been reading and loving this year

The Meat Paradox, Rob Percival

Idol, Louise O’Neill

Big Girl, Small Town, Michelle Gallen

Pachinko, Min Jin Lee