Last week, I was hit with the biggest case of the winter blues. For no reason at all, everything was impossible. My daughter turned into a threenager overnight. I slipped on some ice while running. The muffler on our car broke and the day I was supposed to take it to the shop it snowed and there was nowhere to park so I had to drive my noisy car around and around the block. There were no seats on the bus. And it is cold! And snowy! And dark! Remind me never to move to Sweden.
On the day when I was feeling the worst, I figured out a couple of things:
- Seasonal Affective Disorder is a real thing! I remembered that I feel awful every winter. Time for me to start stalking the sunset times again and looking forward to the end of the month when it will still be light out when I leave work. And in only one month it will be daylight savings time!
- Mercury is in retrograde. This has never, ever meant anything to me, but articles started popping up on my Facebook feed and it’s as good a reason as any to explain how I was feeling. Supposedly during times of Mercury retrograde, things break, appointments get missed, and everything is just generally awful. I hear from Taylor Swift that this Mercury retrograde is particularly awful. Astrology says I’m supposed to feel this way! (I’m also supposed to be compassionate, creative, idealist, escapist and oversensitive according to astrology. Guess my sign!)
- My “problems” are really not so bad. A dear friend of mine, who underwent an actual tragedy not long ago, contacted me to see if I would help proofread a grant she was writing. The combination of doing something to help someone else, and the realization that even in her bad times she was working to improve things for others, really went a long way towards putting my funk in perspective. It’s such common advice that it’s almost cliche, but helping others truly does benefit us as much as it does those on the receiving end of our help.
- Spring is coming! I’m keeping my eyes on the prize by planning my garden and dreaming of sunny, ice-free runs. Our Seed Library’s annual seed swap is even happening this month, which is a great harbinger of springtime.
Finally, yesterday Maria wrote a wonderful blog post with some ways that she’s been handling some major life changes. Check it out if you missed it!
-Irene
Eleventh Stack 