The November Blahs…

Every year when November rolls around and the days get shorter, I begin to feel the seasonal blahs seep into my bones. To be clear, my symptoms are not so severe as to fall into the spectrum of Seasonal Affected Disorder (SAD) and normally clear up as my body adjusts to its new reality. This year has been different though, I haven’t been able to shake them as quickly as in the past.

As the brilliant colours of early fall begin to fade, the lack of natural sunlight and the monotony of a monotone world begin to set in. I start to feel sluggish and well quite honestly just blah. This is part of my normal adjustment to the coming winter. The shorter days and longer nights coupled with the waning intensity of our sun messing with my natural vitamin D production is always the biggest contributor. Normally as the calendar turns from November to December I’ve adjusted, life gets colder but it goes on just fine. So what is different this year.

Could it be the relatively dreary start to December? It seems to me even the little sunlight we get at this time of year has been almost exclusively blotted out behind a veil of thick cloud cover, with rain and more snow than I can remember seeing this early in the season. I have had to shovel out at least four times already this year when we would normally see three or four storms a year.