Attempting to Embrace the Darkness
but also, bffr: November itsn't my favorite
Hello supporters! As someone who has been publicly on the internet for maybe (probably) too long now, it feels like I talk about the same damn things every year, every season. But that’s the thing ~ these seasons do come every year, and coping strategies are a part of life. So today, a bit on this year’s approach to the dark season. And yes, there are books.
As the oldest and her friends are saying, bffr: November kind of sucks.
Besides my deeply unpopular opinions on Thanksgiving1 and holiday shopping2, who decided to have ELECTION DAY the same week as DARKNESS DESCENDS3?
Like, maybe we should have election day on 4th of July when people are all hyped up on patriotism and many people don’t have to work. If we’re going to celebrate colonialism, we might as well vote and celebrate our supposed independence on that day, and also have some damn daylight, no? The polls could close with ceremonial fireworks, it would be super great. Everyone would be sunburned and jubilant and already wearing our country’s team colors and we could vote at the beach. Let’s do it.
But alas, that’s not the way things work. YET. We still get to combine stressful elections with descending darkness and figure out a way to get through.
Every year I come up with a plan to combat my dread of the darkness and lack of daylight here in Wisconsin, and every year I have made it through the winter somehow, some way.
But readers, I don’t want to just survive.
I want to actually LIVE and thrive and be a gentle, hopeful human being all. year. long.
I tweak my strategy a bit every year based on things I learn along the way. That journaling I clung to desperately in the past? Gone. Completely gone. I don’t miss it even one tiny bit. My light therapy light? May bring it out, may not ~ I don’t think it really helped a ton?
Funnily enough, the very best December I have had in over a decade was December 2020 when my school district wouldn’t let us come into the buildings. I could wake with the light. I didn’t have to drive on super scary roads. I could get outside during the daylight. If I had a life / career that would allow for that lifestyle (minus that horrible pandemic), I truly believe I could thoroughly embrace the dark season.
Since I *DO* have to leave for work at 6:30 a.m. to drive to school on often-super-scary roads, and go for all my runs and walks in the dark, and drive a kid to and from basketball practice in the evening in the dark on those same often-super-scary roads and still work inside all day, here’s the strategy for Darkness 2024-2025: