The sun is gone. Again.

Not to be dramatic, but last week's time change derailed my life.

Photo by chiranjeeb mitra on Unsplash

Most people living in the subtropics don't have Seasonal Affective Disorder. We get plenty of vitamin D because our winter temperatures are mild, and the shortness of our winter days is less exaggerated than it is further north. However, this solar-powered swamp dweller has a literal SAD lamp, like somebody living in the wilds of Manitoba.

My dream environment would involve Houston levels of August sunshine with average February temperatures. That would be around 13 hours of sun each day, with highs in the 60s and lows in the 40s. Imagine a life filled with all the sweaters you could wear without ever suffering the grey indignities of a 5 p.m. dusk. Sounds perfect, right?

But no, here we are in Standard Time once again, with an hour of daylight surgically removed. See, I'm the absolute worst kind of human: A night owl who craves sunlight. And "falling back" to Standard Time doesn't give me earlier sunlight. It just disappears that morning hour of daylight because I get up after the sun has risen. (Judge all you want. I've already admitted my night owl tendencies.)

To make matters worse, it has been grey and rainy every day for what feels like weeks now. It's been more like 5 days, but it seems endless. I've been sunk in a muzzy gloom of lassitude. I just want to curl up and read 20th-century gothic novels by Phyllis A. Whitney (decent) or Mary Stewart (better). I barely wrote anything last week and missed sending my newsletter on Friday. I’m even slightly behind on client work, which compounds the guilt.

I sometimes wonder, "How do other people avoid getting derailed by sunlight and weather? Why can't I set my clocks back an hour and simply get on with things instead of collapsing into a heap of useless jelly? What could I accomplish if I weren't so fucking sensitive to every damned thing in the universe, from sunlight to smells to fabric texture?"

But I'll never know, not really.

All I can do is bask in the rays of my SAD lamp and remind myself that the days will start getting longer again in about 6 weeks. That will have to be enough.

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