Fighting my winter time blues

Maximizing daylight, outdoor activities effective.

There’s something about winter that seems to throw people in a funk, and in North Idaho, winter isn’t just a season, it’s a way of life.

Take a memorable morning from a couple of years ago for example. I was walking down to my car when I slipped and fell within mere feet of reaching it safely. Luckily my northern upbringing taught me the best way to absorb the impact of the fall is to firmly break it with my spine, so that’s what I did. That’s pure instinct that you just can’t teach. Upon righting myself I pulled open my door-handle to let myself in. It came off in my hand and after that I just kind of stared at it for a while. When I finally got in the car and threw the handle in the backseat, I noticed the interior of my car smelled of what I suspected to be feral cat piss. I had left my passenger side window halfway down and evidently my car had provided a temporary shelter/litter box for a stray cat. Wonderful.

Ordinarily, these would have been the kinds of things I just took in stride, but it all seems to build momentum when you know that on top of everything else, it will be dark by 3:30 p.m.

According to the American Academy of Family physics, about six percent of the population suffers from Seasonal Affective Disorder (or S.A.D.—How convenient is that?), but the phenomena gets more common in regions at higher latitudes that see less of the sun. You can’t get much higher in the lower 48 than Coeur d’Alene.

I told a friend of mine how winter can put me in a crappy mood and she recommended a full-spectrum light, which emits 10,000 lux, similar to that of natural daylight. I found that this, as well as adjusting my sleep schedule to spend the most amount of time in the daylight (you have to wake up at about 7 a.m. ) worked best for me. Going on frequent walks or spending time outside during daylight hours helps a lot too.

This was only what was effective for me though. Everybody has their different methods for dealing with the wintertime blues, but as I pulled away from my house, my bad mood began to dissipate immediately. At least until the rear end of my car slid into the light pole at the end of my driveway.