Gloom and Doom

[yellowcanoe]

It really helps to get outside. Officially we are south of 45 and should have nine hours of light. But being just east of several mountain ranges that generate clouds we never get a totally clear day. I have to admit that we get to enjoy frequent UFO ( lenticular) clouds. Most of the time after 11 am the clouds come in . Early morning is glorious with sun. 701 am sunrise sunset at 3:45. So the key is chug coffee and get out there. It helps to be retired. Because we are right at the base of a mountain to the south west sunset in the kitchen is at 1pm

We get snow but not feet in a day though we are in a bulls eye for local snow accumulation . We have had a weenie total of one foot total in the last three weeks. But enough to snowshoe and watch my dog track wee things traveling under the snow!

I remember having to navigate I 81 when we lived in Black RIver and had classes at night in Syracuse. We drove by edge delineators. Everything was white and deep.

Christmas lights help.. Or lets call them anti SAD lights. We are one of four families on a three mile long road at this time of the year. and the last.. So we decorate for us. No competition.

Mindfulness and noticing the small things makes being outside the key for me. Admittely its harder Getting there than being there. Even though conservation land snowshoe trails literally abut my yard. I still need a good kick to open the door and go out.

 

[lowangle al]

The problem got worse for me as I got older, getting bad when I was about 50. Vitamin D3 did a lot to turn it around and relieve the worst of the symptoms. I exercised and tried to get out every day but other than that I had zero energy. It's pretty depressing when you wake up at 5::00 AM and the sun doesn't come up until almost 10:00. It always amazed me that how the symptoms would disappear almost immediately when I would fly south to more daylight.

 

[Odyssey]

Without wanting to sound overly pathetic, though I suppose it's way too late for me now ha ha, I also love living alternatively virtually through other people's vlogs on Youtube. Who doesn't want to go canoe tripping in the north country when all is locked in ice and snow and we're hunkered down dealing with shortened days? Most evenings I merely sit facing my laptop screen much like a dog licking the driver's side window, but on special nights I plug in to the bigger TV screen and go big and stay home. It works for me to drive away the winter blues.

 

[Iskweo]

I was in Vancouver for December one year and we had fog the entire month. Makes people insane.

I am lucky in that I have good coping skills. Sitting with coffee watching the snow fall from my living room works. Having a shop where I can overhaul tractors and cars or builld canoes seems to help a lot too. I get out sometimes with my snowshoes as long as its not too cold. The problem is that when it is cold on the prairie it is nasty becuase of the wind. I did find Calgary to be a great place ot live because it had sunshine almost every day. I woiuld suggest changing the lights around your computer station to assist with SAD.

Retirement has indeed made a huge difference. I loved my last job, the work at least, but the miserable aholes I worked for were a bit much. I love being in a nice positive bubble these days. I spent a lot of time away from home during my service and we got used to living in the moment. We used to say if you're not where you're at, you're nowhere. So I try to enjoy even something like a dump run.....I drive the gravel roads, take my time, talk to the guys at the dump, browse a little....make an event out of it.

Instead of lavishing affection on your pet, try doing that to the wife. At worst it will creep her out, at best, you may find a way to lift the SAD for a while eh. Just sayin.

 

[yknpdlr]

Many years ago I was flight crew (Navigator) on a KC-135, being deployed to Eielson (Fairbanks) over the Christmas/New Years time period. We actually had to divert on the way there to pick up an aircraft crash investigation team, as a tanker had just crashed on the river the night before. Very sad circumstances, with multiple delays due to cold effects (mostly leaky hydraulic seals) on all the former southern based aircraft going on a mission that night, the crew literally froze without enough available external heat generators that were piped into other aircraft waiting to go. Minds numbed, they forgot critical procedures after takeoff when the gear failed to retract and they augured into the ground.

Anyway, it was -57F when we landed. Those J-57 engines are so efficient in the cold even at idle that the pilot has to shud down two engines as soon as we were surely down to keep from running off the end of the runway. For the first eight days the temperature never got above -40F (= -40C). There was no flying anyway, due to the accident investigation and heavy iice fog, so we had lots of down time. I enjoyed walking around base and experiencing the ice fog effect. The oil pipeline was just then under construction at the time not far away, so I decided to hike toward it. We had only about 3 hours of usable daylight at the time. The local safety guy said that no matter how much you bundle up in arctic cold weather gear, that if you walk, what gets cold first is your knees, due to that area forcing out warm air from your quilted underwear with ever step. Sure enough, that was true. Beginning at sunrise, I walked through the ice fog and reached the construction site, only to have to almost immediately turn around as half my daylight was already gone. Being there was one of the most memorable times of my military career. Many, many years later, I returned to the arctic for the Yukon River canoe races and experienced the inverse effect of almost constant daylight in the summer. People would walk aound downtown in the light long after middnight. What a hoot. We could paddle under light sky at any time of the "night". I loved that too.

 

[canoeswithduckheads]

Well, perhaps you could take a page (or at least paragraph) out of this fella's lengthy (and for many years, under-appreciated) whale of a book:


''Call me Ishmael. Some years ago--never mind how long precisely--having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodologically knocking people's hats off--then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball... I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.'' - Herman Melville

Now, an ocean or ship perhaps not being easily available to you there in the heart of the Shawnee Nation, you might take a swing at that other chapeau disturbing methodologically, as far as it comes to promoting circulation and driving off (or rupturing) the spleen. But then, even with good legs and head-starts I'm not sure effective hiding spots will hold their clandestine state for you through the long winter.

For me, at least the last couple of months, whilst I await acquisition of a new canoe transport vehicle (the 20-year old van having rusted into an inoperable state) so as to resume my own, mini-oceanic voyages of grim-mouthed reductions, I've taken to one-hour gallavants through two local cemeteries. (I know, I know, there's a cheery path to wander). It's done as excuse to walk the pent-up dog, upon returning home from work in a civil twilight fade to dusky chill. But, even in the brief gloom, then darkness, there amidst a solemn grayness of granite, ground, and sky, I find little gleams of pleasing distraction. Tombstone bases seemingly aglow, their flat polished surfaces making the most of any straying sunbeam. A merlin falcon, likely in temporary hiatus from his migration, looking seemingly unconcerned down on me and my canine associate Finn, as I attempt poorly whistled trillos to address it up in its spruce pinnacle. Finn exercising his own spleen, as he unbridles 9-hours of boxed-up, hounding desire to run "zoomies," figure-eight-like, through the monuments, till passels of scents stop him short, absorbing his full attention through that olfactory ever in overdrive. Old specimen trees of majestic silhouette, shadowy branches scratching those strange, streaky late-autumn clouds from ominous skies. An occasional fox or deer straying on scene, my first indication of their presence being me spying a sitting, nose-pointing, whimpering dingle-docker, usually which is immediately followed by a, "GET YOUR arse BACK HERE! DON'T MAKE ME COME DOWN THERE!" (usually works, although unpocketing a Dingo Stick is required upon return). Hell, even gleaming some interesting epitaph or history lesson off a finely chiseled stone has its modicum of reward.

Anyway, though likely way shy of some former POTUS's "thousand points" count, I do seem to have wandered, unexpectedly, into a few brief beams of SAD-interruptus. I guess if that Mendel fella could keep himself giddy through those monastery winters with a few pea plants (or was it the fine abby ale) I'll have to let this here SAD-sack make use of some of these pod-fillers. Next week, with Xmas stalking even closer its formidable ensemnle of spectral, Scroogian-instigators, think I'll skip me the Ghost of Christmas Past's principal playground. Perhaps I'll catch my beams just walking the dog through a solstice-dimmed neighborhood aglare with 5,000 LED households thrumming their fan-inflated Santas-in-a-Snowglobe. I hope you can find a few peapods, too, sir, Have hope. Even landward, whether they meant it or not, they're out there.

Call me Fish Tale

 

[DanOver]

OP - you have got some good advice here in getting outside, being grateful and positive, spending time with the dog.

i lived just outside of Chicago for 6&1/2 years in the 1990s and another 14 years beginning in 2005. It’s the king of gloomy weather that makes a farm wife sharpen a butcher knife and stare at her husbands neck. You find yourself going to the grocery store just to stand under the fresh produce lights.

The three things that changed my SAD and allowed me to feel good again were
1) taking 5000 units of vitamin D3 with some fish oil every day - amazing change!
2) get out in the sun any time it is out. If it was sunny at lunch, I would eat in my car in the sun.
3) look for opportunities to do something for someone else. This always changed my mood for the better, wether I did something for a friend, family or a stranger. Stepping outside myself gave perspective.

The fact that you are looking for a plan is a good sign! Stay positive and work your plan. Remember that spring can be the hardest, because it seems like it’s taking so long to come. If you are going to go somewhere sunny,:save the trip until late February/ early March. It gives you something
hing to look forward to and when you get back, it’s only a few weeks until the weather changes.

DanOver

 

[PaddlingPitt]

Holy, Moly, canoeswithduckheads!! That is some impressive piece of writing. You and Hermann. I looked on your profile to see if perchance you were a writer by trade, or profession, or even by simple inclination. I found there no clue, however subtle. It says, though, that you entered our world in 2015, and are right now, only four years old! A true wordsmith prodigy.

 

[gumpus]

There's a lot of good advice and philosophy on this thread.

I started working part time as a lifeguard at the local YMCA and I'm able to help the YMCA and also give some tips to inexperienced swimmers. I do feel pretty resilient to the dark and cold season but then again it isn't even winter yet and I sure don't want to jinx anything since we're already setting way too many weather records.

 

[sweeper]

I never became an electrical engineer, but I did eventually become something. There was no other choice. I took a two-year buyout when I was 55, and have been happy ever since. Just like when I was 13. If the truth be known, I would have accepted a two-year buyout on the very first day I showed up for work.

I’m with you, sweeper!!!!!!!!!

I got a 1/4 year buyout over two years from the US Postal Service and it was a no brainer. I jumped on it like it was a free Chestnut Canoe and haven't regretted it for one minute.

 

[PaddlingPitt]

I got a 1/4 year buyout over two years from the US Postal Service and it was a no brainer. I jumped on it like it was a free Chestnut Canoe and haven't regretted it for one minute.

Now here's a conundrum. It they had offered me a free Chestnut Canoe to keep working, would I have accepted?

 

[memaquay]

I was offered the use of many canoes for free for eternity if I continued teaching. Me thinks, in reference to a previous thread, if they had offered me a hot Granny to stay, I might have jumped on it, so to speak, and of course, the resulting 4th divorce would have kept me teaching till the bucket was kicked. Thankfully, the stable of royalex and fiberglass beasts did not tempt me to continue the daily torture of trying to inspire 90 uninterested pubescent nightmares to ruminate on the marvels of plate tectonics. And thankfully, the collection of hot Grannies in the near vicinity has already been cornered by the collection of geriatric Don Juans who congregate in the coffee shop every morning to dissect the moral fibre of the likes of me, who still prefer my women under the age of 50.

The best thing about retirement is not having to see the wretched masses of humanity. Going solo is the best thing for the soul, winter, spring summer and fall.

 

[Iskweo]

I already have a barn full of canoes of various types, albeit only one faux chestnut now. Had they offered porters or sherpas to go with that, I may have weakened.