I don’t know about you but I hate winter–particularly February. I truly don’t get how some people (most people, presumably) just carry on with their lives throughout the entire year, same as ever. For me, life pretty much comes to a standstill; I don’t just hibernate, I literally go into torpor…a term I actually just now discovered trying to remember the name of the type of mouse that sleep for like six months straight (dormice, btw) through the winter. Per Merriam-Webster, “The English word torpor is a 13th-century borrowing from Latin: torpōr-, torpormean “numbness, paralysis, absence of energy, lethargy.” This is literally me the past few months, especially this month. Supposedly humans don’t hibernate or go into torpor but I personally beg to differ. Ok, so no, I don’t totally shut down and sleep for months on end (OMG if only…) but seriously, I come pretty darn close. And the torpor thing–the description above is sooo accurate re: me at present.
Winter sucks
Winter definitely has a ton to do with it because I’ve been through enough winters to know that, at least physically, I essentially shut down from December to April. I LOATHE cold and unless I’m forced, I essentially don’t leave the house when it’s cold. Having dogs has helped some; I will (grudgingly) walk them in the cold…but by “cold” I mean like mid-30s or above. If it’s below that, sorry, it’s the fenced backyard for them and essentially no exercise for me. Between being self-employed for the past five years and COVID, my winter shut-down has ramped up to the point of being truly pathetic–at least in the days when I had to go to the office, I did; working for and by myself, at home, isn’t a great state for me any month of the year but during winter–yikes. I don’t usually get depressed during winter, per se–that’s more of a spring/summer thing for lucky me–but as I’m learning, for better or for worse, depression can have surprising contours that don’t necessarily express as sadness. “Numbness, paralysis, absence of energy, lethargy”–that, in a nutshell, is basically depression minus the sadness; it also, as I’m in the process of learning, can suck even more than depression that feels like depression because, it turns out, feeling nothing at all, having no motivation to do anything–is insidious and creepy and makes your life feel flat in ways depression never has before.
The irony of this blog is that I spent so, so much time tinkering to get it to look a certain way, but once I finally accomplished that, I either couldn’t muster up the enthusiasm/energy to write anything or felt that because my original vision for this site was to have it be this cute lifestyle blog where I shared photos of my house, stuff I was coveting or loving and other “fun” stuff. I don’t know that I’ve ever shared this but my inspiration for this blog came from a blog I discovered via a home decor magazine–The Pink Clutch blog. Back during the early days of COVID when I was obsessively rearranging every room of my house and one of the few places I was willing to go wearing a mask was the thrift store, I thought it would be great to be able to share my spiffed up home and thrift scores online since I wasn’t able to have anyone over to my actual house, and the bright colors and posts about home projects on The Pink Clutch and other Pinterest- and magazine-worthy blogs inspired me to try to create a site with that same look and feel. Granted, the initial design phase ended up being the beginning of a manic episode that ended up landing me in the hospital–not exactly the vibe I had been going for!
But on the positive side, through the process of designing and redesigning I a) learned a totally new skill and hobby–design–which has turned into one of my favorite things and b) up-leveled my WordPress design/development skills a ton. Both great byproducts of the original intent, but still–it feels so weird to have invested so much time/energy into building this blog only to hardly ever write anything here because I feel weird/self-conscious that the main thing I feel like writing about–when I feel like writing at all–is about either being depressed or something else decidedly non-peppy or “lifestyle”-y. But YOLO–the reality is that as much as I wish I could be super shiny and positive all (or even part lol) of the time, I’m just…not. And who gives a shit, honestly? Surely not the zero readers of this blog. Also? At 54, I’m tired of trying to keep up appearances or whatever…I mean, not that I ever really do/did or anything, but still–the fact that I definitely find myself trying to think of “positive” things to write about here is annoying me and also just stupid, so I’m hereby attempting to let go of that aspiration. I mean, who says a person can’t be cynical, depressed AND enjoy cute clothes and home decor?
Anyway, I will say that writing about anything at all is preferable to being stuck in torpor, paralyzed and unable to muster the enthusiasm or even will to do essentially anything at all other than play iPad games until I’m so bored I could cry or binge watch TV. I will say that the only ray of light in my whole totally uninspired winter has been that I’ve been reading a lot, which is something that I’d sort of lost interest in during COVID. So at least there’s that. Also? February is almost over, which means that torpor season is drawing to a close (please god) so hopefully I’ll be able to get back into the groove of life soon. That and hopefully I’ll also get around to figuring out why the very few subscribers to this blog I once had keep magically disappearing thanks to MailPoet…I keep meaning to switch to Mailchimp or something else but, you know, torpor.
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