And so it begins

January and February tend to be my worst months. My Seasonal Affective Disorder - which I think is more a hibernation atavism than anything else - kicks into high gear around now, with the extinguishing of the Christmas lights that kept the nights merry and bright for the last month or two. Even though the days are getting longer throughout this period, the memory of sunny days is getting farther and farther away.

I only took one "Intersession" course in college. Intersession was a compressed semester tucked into the weeks between the Fall and the Winter Spring semesters. Courses ran longer each day, and more frequently each week. The course I took was (I believe) an Electricity & Magnetism lab, so most of the work was done in the class itself. I spent most of my non-class hours sleeping.

One of the reasons I started this blog - and there are many - was to establish a record of my daily life for my own reference. I've used it that way quite a bit when I'm trying to remember what I was doing at some particular point in the last four-and-a-half years. It's interesting to review the records from January and February for each of these years to see just how uninspired I was feeling in those months.

It's sad, really. I feel like I lose two months each year, one-sixth of every calendar. And there are several significant events in these months: my birthday, someone else's birthday who is close to me, and then of course the after-Valentine's Day candy sales.

Working where I am working at the moment helps a bit, since my work environment is brightly lit and evenly warm. If it weren't for the occasional window I wouldn't even know what the weather outside was like.

But I'll get by. I've been through this forty times already. This will be my forty-first trip into the gray haze that is the beginning of the year. By the beginning of March, barring any disasters, things will start to look hopeful again. By the end of April everything will be sunshine and happiness again.


Powderfinger, "My Happiness":

Title reference: From the Babylon 5 opening titles, season 5, spoken by Vorlon ambassador Kosh.