Be Happy, Lose the Winter Blues

Never cut down a tree in the wintertime. Never make a negative decision in the low time. Never make your most important decisions when you are in your worst moods. Wait. Be patient. The storm will pass. The spring will come ~ Robert H Shuller

A repost from last winter, but seems especially relevant given I’ve spent the last 6 weeks in the worst winter NY has had in some time ~ Rev Kane

The fact that I’m writing this post from Northern California in an abnormally sunny and dry winter might seem a little strange.  However, one of the reasons I live in Northern California is because growing up I got quite tired of long hard winters.  People who never grew up in snowy and cold winter regions are always confused by this; snow is so pretty they always say.  Without a doubt I agree with them, one of my favorite things is to be out in the woods after it has been snowing for a while.  There is nothing as peaceful and serene as a forest painted white with snow with big fluffy flakes falling to the ground.  It’s like a big white blanket that dulls sound and makes it feel like the world is all your own.

However, there is the shoveling and the tracking of snow into the house, horrible driving conditions, not being able to get out to do what you want and of course the cold.  Particularly this year as people learned a new term, Polar Vortex, they were reminded that the cold can be truly brutal.  Not to be left out the truly dangerous part of winter is the ice that you crash your car on, that you slip and fall on and that hangs from your roof like winter’s own fangs.

So in a tough winter monotony sets in and very often our mood drops with it.  This isn’t only a problem for people in the snow and cold regions, folks in the Pacific Northwest deal with the same issues in the grey and rainy winters they face each year.  They even have a condition named for this issue, Seasonal Affective Disorder, SAD which I think at some level is the most obnoxiously named condition ever, I mean really, it’s not enough that you’re depressed without being labeled as having SAD.  So many of us flee south to warm waves and beaches but for those of you unable I thought I’d pull up a few resources for you to try to shake of the winter monotony and have a happy winter’s day ~ Rev Kane

A nice piece from the field of psychology on how to battle Seasonal Affective Disorder

From Web MD, actual symptoms of Seasonal Affective Disorder

Just the tips, a wiki on how to fight the winter blues