As you may have already guessed, my health isn’t the only thing I’ve been struggling with lately. The writing, when it comes at all, has been coming in drips and drabs, scritches and scribbles. While disappointing, it’s not altogether surprising because it happens to me every year about this time.
December, January, February - they’re what I call my dark months. And I don’t necessarily mean dark as in the weather, although that certainly doesn’t help, I mean dark as in my mood. Every year I think I’ll be prepared for the dark months, and every year....I’m not.
People think I’m joking when I say I’m weather driven, but it’s really true. Or maybe I should say I'm light driven. I used to think it was the time change that caused it - it seems to start and end with “winter time” (as opposed to Daylight Saving Time) - but while the days during this period are naturally shorter, any extended period of grey/gloomy weather can bring it on.
Sometimes it’s not so bad if I can stay ahead of it, but once it gets its claws in me the only thing I can do is ride it out. November I was doing NaNo so I really didn’t have time to worry about the weather or my mood or anything else but writing, which is another good reason to do it. Then December I was so busy with Christmas, the baking and visiting and shopping, that I also didn’t have time to be down. But January, when I finally had a breather, I stopped to rest for a minute and couldn’t seem to get back up again.
I always start out the year with big writing plans that peter right out when the new year actually comes. Of course it didn’t help that I was also slammed with the mega-flu and a couple of bouts of mega-colds (I still have a lingering sinus infection from the last one). You’d think I’d just save myself the trouble and take January and February off from writing, but, well, hope springs eternal I guess. Too bad I couldn’t move to someplace like New Zealand for the winter months. LOL
The time change will be upon us in a couple of weeks, and already I feel my mood lifting. I stopped fighting my depression and just accepted it for what it was, and believe it or that seems to help. So do the glimmers of sunlight we’ve had over the last few days.
Instead of struggling to write things that just don’t want to be written, I’ve been trying to fill my time with other things so I don’t waste all my time on mindless games. This in no small part includes working on getting things squared away in my office. I’ve made some good progress in there, even the hubby was impressed. I have a new printer that fits on top of my metal filing cabinet like it was made for it, and my tea station fits nicely on top of a small wooden filing cabinet I filched from the hubby’s office. I even disposed of the big pile of books and junk in the corner.
In other words, if I haven’t been writing much lately, at least I’ve been working on my writing space. Which is almost as good. And reading more, which is always a good thing for a writer. AND I was checking out some night school courses at a nearby college (okay, not really nearby, it’s about a 45-60 minute drive) and one of them is a course for speculative fiction. It looks like it might be really interesting. At the very least it'll get me writing again.
Maybe I’m actually seeing a light at the end of that dark tunnel.
