January
I don't think I used to get depressed in the winter, but maybe I just wasn't very cognizant of it. I don't remember thinking, "wow, winter is really fucking depressing" until I was in my late twenties, working in a cubicle in an office. Maybe that was part of it, too. Life looks different from within mauve cubicle walls.
One year, one of my friends gave me an extra sun lamp he had, and I put it in the corner on my desk so the white glow would hit me as I stared at the computer. I don't remember it working.
When I was a teacher, I don't remember thinking of winter as particularly bad—but in those days January meant second semester, which meant it was that much closer to summer vacation. And it was romanticism and modernism time in American Lit—Thoreau and Whitman and Hemingway and Faulkner. My favorites. Also, when I was teaching, that "I can't wait until summer when I don't have to work" feeling was with me all year round, so what difference is a little cold weather going to make?
Now I don't have cubicles or working for the man as an excuse. I work for myself, at home or at coffee shops, or occasionally in an office where I only have to show up for a few hours at a time. The freedom makes the glumness of January almost physical, like it's a whiny toddler clinging to me and dragging me down. Everything is tired. Tired and cold and lifeless.
It gets dark so early, and it's so cold out I can't bring myself to go anywhere I don't have to. Sometimes I can't even bring myself to wash my face before I go to bed because I know the water will be cold—I use the makeup remover wipes, which are also cold but somehow more tolerable. Everything outside is gray and bare and muddy and brown and windy—it's just generally unpleasant.
It doesn't last forever, spring will come, blah blah blah. It will. And when those first warm days come around everything will seem fresh and new and worth living again, and I'll be more willing to do yoga and walk to the coffee shop and get out of my pajamas...maybe. But until then it feels like I'm just killing time.
One year, one of my friends gave me an extra sun lamp he had, and I put it in the corner on my desk so the white glow would hit me as I stared at the computer. I don't remember it working.
When I was a teacher, I don't remember thinking of winter as particularly bad—but in those days January meant second semester, which meant it was that much closer to summer vacation. And it was romanticism and modernism time in American Lit—Thoreau and Whitman and Hemingway and Faulkner. My favorites. Also, when I was teaching, that "I can't wait until summer when I don't have to work" feeling was with me all year round, so what difference is a little cold weather going to make?
Now I don't have cubicles or working for the man as an excuse. I work for myself, at home or at coffee shops, or occasionally in an office where I only have to show up for a few hours at a time. The freedom makes the glumness of January almost physical, like it's a whiny toddler clinging to me and dragging me down. Everything is tired. Tired and cold and lifeless.
It gets dark so early, and it's so cold out I can't bring myself to go anywhere I don't have to. Sometimes I can't even bring myself to wash my face before I go to bed because I know the water will be cold—I use the makeup remover wipes, which are also cold but somehow more tolerable. Everything outside is gray and bare and muddy and brown and windy—it's just generally unpleasant.
It doesn't last forever, spring will come, blah blah blah. It will. And when those first warm days come around everything will seem fresh and new and worth living again, and I'll be more willing to do yoga and walk to the coffee shop and get out of my pajamas...maybe. But until then it feels like I'm just killing time.