SAD

The damn SAD kind of jumped me a bit right after the new year. I just kept on vegetating and thinking that maybe I’ll start tomorrow, for several days. Pretty typical for this time of the year, there are things I just can’t manage, like writing (requires the ability to concentrate, inside your head, if I can’t even remember what the characters have already done I can’t keep the plot together), but while I can paint, and draw (you can see the whole thing with one glance…), the big problem of the season applies to them too – if I stop doing it regularly, even for a few days, getting started again takes an effort. Sometimes a pretty big one.

And I have been craving fast carbs like nothing. Potatoes and rice perhaps are excusable, but the two liters of ice cream will show the next time I dare to weight myself. This time of the year they always do, especially since I haven’t been moving much either. We had a very white Christmas with lots of snow but the weather warmed up around new year, and for a couple of days it rained. Which meant that most of the snow melted, except for sidewalks and other places where people had stamped the snow tight. So then it got cold again and now those places are coated with ice. I hate ice. I love walking, usually, but when that would mean walking on ice – no thanks. I fall down several times every winter even if I do avoid walking, and one of the problems that can give you, long term, are stuff like the badly scarred tendons I have on my shoulders. Lots of falls, most resulting in slight injuries like a small rip on a tendon which might give you slight tenderness on that area for a couple of days, at most, if you notice it at all when it happens, but if you get lots of those – well, they scar, and lots of scarring on a tendon can mean that it won’t work quite right any more, or fit in the space where it is supposed to fit… and then you may end with limited mobility and inflammation, and if that gets bad enough you may need surgery. I’m not quite at that point yet (occasional inflammation, but everything still moves almost as well as before), and I’d prefer not to get there at all. So I have gotten very wary of slippery surfaces. I still do fun stuff which might end in falls, but if I risk those injuries now it better be for something I really enjoy doing, and just walking while being scared of the surface on which you walk doesn’t quite meet that qualification. Especially if the weather is also less than enjoyable. Which it often is here, around this time.

Some parts of aging really do suck. Other parts not so much. I think I like what I am now a lot more than I liked the younger me. I used to be a lot more insecure and neurotic than I am now, for one thing. 🙂

Okay, I think I can get myself out of this rut, even if it is harder now than it would be when there is more light. I have started doing some preliminary work with acrylics. The oils are mostly still either a bit too wet or way too wet to show. I do much prefer oils to acrylics, but I think I can manage simpler paintings with the acrylics too. We’ll see.