I can’t believe that I’m the only one who feels short on energy and gas when winter rolls around.
Winter takes everything a step-down
By Matthew Fraser, Editor in Chief
I almost didn’t make it out of bed this morning.
My pillow held my head down and my blanket was like a strap across my chest. If I say I fought mightily I hope you would believe me. The struggle lasted for minutes that could have been hours but in hindsight, it felt like seconds. I won eventually though; I have a hard time writing in bed, so I had to make it to my desk somehow.
There was no school bell calling, just some numbers on my schedule. No car to heat up, just a slog to the SkyTrain. On the way there, that crisp, cold Vancouver air did wonders to shock a little bit of energy into me. Still, it was only a matter of time before I would meet that Queen sized vice grip again.
I say this like it only happened today; the reality, I almost haven’t made it out of bed every day since mid-September or so. It’s like there’s not enough sleep to put gas back in the tank and not enough sunlight to jolt me in the morning. I go through the day rebuilding my stores of energy just to have it sucked out in the late evening as I succumb to the nightly trance called sleep. Once in that cotton prison of a bed, just enough is given to be refreshing, but never enough to make waking up and rising from it easy.
It doesn’t help that I don’t drink coffee. I thought and hoped that daylight savings time would give me a little help, but that only lasted for a week.
Maybe we should officially move everything back to 10 am in the winter instead of whatever god-awful time we currently consider acceptable right now. Wouldn’t that be nice? We can let the early birds go out, get the worm, and have the roads to themselves while the rest of us wallow in our pillows. It can’t just be me who finds this massively appealing.
I can’t believe that I’m the only one who feels short on energy and gas when winter rolls around. Certainly, someone else feels perpetually a gear lower than they normally would be once the O and N months come around. I know Seasonal Affective Disorder is real, but I think that’s a step too far. This is just a strange and long-lasting downshift in the internal machine. Like all your energy went south for the holidays and forgot to give your brain advance notice.
Mayhaps the internal caveman ancestor is warning his long-disconnected ancestor of the perils of winter and the need to conserve energy. Maybe that’s why my pillow will nearly win tomorrow.
