There are so many jolly things you can suggest to a friend who is down in the dumps. “Make a gratitude list,” for instance. “Take a nice hot bath.” “Treat yourself to a manicure.” Fine. I guess. Whatever.

I don’t get manicures. I look in those places with all those nice immigrant ladies breathing in solvents, and I think to myself, “I can destroy nail polish almost instantaneously,” and move on.

Nor do I own a bathtub. When I realized this is my last house, I got rid of my bathtub and put in a lovely tiled shower with a glass door I have to squeegee every time or it will get water spots on it. Also, while a shower is lovely, I am impatient with having to do all the undressing and dressing stuff.

And gratitude lists just make me want to spit. I know I have a lot to be grateful for. My life is extraordinarily fortunate, and if I list all the wonderful things in it, you know what happens? I go, “If things are so good, why do I feel uneasy and sad, then?”

Actually, I know why. It’s December, and therefore I would prefer not to.

Prefer not to what? I would prefer not to do anything. “I would prefer not to,” is, of course, the repeated answer of Melville’s “Bartleby The Scrivener,” who would rather not do anything at all he is asked to do. It does not work out well for him. Spoiler: In the end, he prefers not to eat, and finally starves to death in prison. But there you are. In December, I don’t wanna, and every year, no matter how hard I work at it, December is a mood.

I am considerably insulated against the annual bad mood this time around, mind you, because I have taken lots of actions to make me feel better, against my instincts. And I do have things I’m grateful for. But I’m going to respect my feelings, which means I won’t try to persuade myself out of them.

Oh well, fine, all right. I’m grumpy about it, but sure, I’ll make a gratitude list.

So what am I grateful for?

• Yesterday, when two of my friends got into a peculiar and very public struggle over opinions, I wasn’t the one who had annoyed either one of them. It was great. They were both shaking with fury. I talked one of them down afterwards.
• When another acquaintance contradicted me flat out, I just stared at her. I was not tempted in the least to take her statement to heart, because it was so ridiculous.
• The cat’s opinions also have no validity, except for the ones where he loves me inordinately and thinks I’m great. Those opinions are good. Also, he is furry and warm, so he feels nice, but when I get tired of him sitting in my lap, he is light enough to put down.
• The world is going to hell, but it has always been rolling off a cliff, all my life, and I have no obligation to feel bad. Feeling terrible about things out of my control is not in itself a virtuous act. If there is something I can do to help, I do it. And as I remind myself regularly, I do a lot of those things.
• “I would prefer not to,” is a perfectly good excuse, though I usually say, “Oh, I wish I could, but I can’t,” instead. Even if I don’t wish I could. I don’t have to go volunteer in the elementary school library tomorrow. I don’t have to go to my friend’s annual Christmas party, or my other friend’s annual Christmas party, for that matter. There is absolutely no reason for me to visit my husband’s grave when it’s cold out. He’s dead and he doesn’t care.
• And I am grateful, immensely grateful, that I know December is going to have sucky bits, every year, and all I have to do is hunker down and get through it.

It’s three weeks or so until the solstice, after all, and soon after that, Christmas will be over. Soon enough, I will be bopping around chirping like a sparrow at a feeder while everyone else is free to loathe January. It happens every year.

I won’t tell them to cheer up and be grateful, though.