Any ideas?

My amazing friends AmericanMum and Subversive Love and I have fin-al-ly (as Jen would probably say) started our book club.  Jane Austin’s Mansfield Park is up first.  And chosen by the most scientific of methods, I must say.

Almost every winter my list of things to do both at home and at work slowly piles up and gets to be so long that I can’t seem to do anything at all.  It’s not that any one of these tasks is so hard to accomplish, it’s just that the thought of all of them together is so overwhelming that I just want to bury my head in my pillow and hide.

Logically I know what’s going on when this happens, and it totally pisses me off that I can’t do much about it but ride it out. Seasonal depression, sometimes known as Seasonal Affective Disorder (S.A.D.) has reared it’s ugly head.  And in Seattle, S.A.D. is the soup du jour of winter.

This year has been particularly bad for me, since it’s been about two years since I’ve actually spent an entire winter at home and not either alternating weeks between Seattle and sunny SoCal or flying back and forth to the East Coast.  Couple that with the fact that Spring seems to be playing hide-and-seek in the Northwest and DING! DING! DING! We have a winner.

 Check out the symptoms, which typically begin in the fall, intensify in winter, and subside in spring:

• Decreased energy and activity. CHECK
• Tiredness, sleep more CHE..ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
• Sadness, anxiety OH YEAH
• Appetite changes (usually increased appetite) OF COURSE
• Carbohydrate craving DUH
• Weight gain DON’T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT
• Loss of interest in sex (although I wouldn’t know, as my sex life has been as dry as the town I grew up in, probably due to bullets 1-5 up there, dammit) MOST LIKELY
• Withdrawal from friends and family UNFORTUNATELY
• Difficulty concentrating and accomplishing tasks WITHOUT A DOUBT

So how do I fix it?  Sunlight and activity.  All I can hope for is that beautiful Spring days like today start becoming more frequent.  In a small victory in my quest to make friends both inside and outside of work (more on that later), I was invited for an afternoon dog walk with a co-worker (YEA!).  Since it was still sunny when I left, I took Chloe by this dog park down the street from my house I’ve been meaning to check out.  Too many big dogs for her to deal with, but there’s a people park attached, so we took a stroll to see what was what.  This, this, this and this.  That’s what. 

See?  I already feel better.  What a great day.