5 Ways to Beat the Blues

In my last post, I talked about having cabin fever. This post is about things I've done to fight back those blues.

1. Sort out every junk drawer in my home. This was fun for the first 30 seconds. I was intending to get rid of things I hadn't used (or even thought about for a while), but I just ended up finding crap I might need again. Bottom line: I didn't get rid of anything, but I did buy a small trunk to store all the old makeup, lotions, hair items and keys that unlock something somewhere.
2. Actually watch the videos on my YouTube "Watch Later" list. 4 videos in, I had bored myself to pity. I spent the next hour trying to figure the state of mind I'd been in when I'd bookmarked videos explaining fractal math or they why's and how's of home insulation. I mean, really?
3. Pull out the bag of hair I bought a few months ago. Yes, hair. Hair for braiding in extensions. I'd watched a video that made the shit look do-able, but after I got an entire 6-inch braid completed, I realized the damn thing wasn't even still attached to my own hair. (I put the braid in the junk trunk because it might make a cool key-chain later on.) If I'd paid more than $0.99 for the bag of fake horsetail, I'd really be pissed. At least I got a good laugh out of the experience. And I did enjoy the video.
4. Read actual books - the kind with paper pages. Remember those? I barely did. I was thumbing through "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Biblical Mysteries" and got upset because I couldn't just click on the index and shoot right to the page I wanted. (When did I, a wanna-be author, stop reading "real" books? I only have a collection because of the freebies cart at the local library. That right there is a sad thing to admit.)
5. Remind myself how freaking old I'm getting. This is something I do every now and then, no matter the season. I'll try doing a back-bend or the splits and my body will let me know just how bad my muscle memory is. I almost didn't put this next part in here, but I have no shame, so here ya go: I can barely jump rope anymore. I don't know what the problem is. I can still dance pretty good, so it's not a rhythm thing. Is coordination something that goes with age? Well, damnit.

Just so you know, except for the laughing I do, none of this really does keep my blues completely away. Usually, after I finish laughing, I end up slightly more depressed. Who the hell wouldn't be depressed about not being able to skip rope? That's okay. I read somewhere that 10 or 15 minutes spent laughing can burn the calories found in a piece of chocolate. Great. At the rate that I eat chocolate, I'd have to laugh my way through the entire winter season.

Point of this post? Just another thing to get me through twenty more minutes of winter.

Peace

--Free

Cabin Fever

Cabin Fever.

Wikipedia defines it as : "an idiomatic term, first recorded in 1918, for a claustrophobic reaction that takes place when a person or group is isolated and/or shit in a small space, with nothing to do for an extended period."

I just call it Cabin Crazy.

Too tired to raise my hand

I've been suffering from CF/CC, or whatever you want to call it, for the past couple weeks.

I'm tired of winter. I'm tired of snow and slush and cold and dark and having to run my damn car for twenty minutes before it wants to go anywhere. The other day, I got so tired of this shit that, I swear, if my crazy ex had asked me to visit him in Texas for a few days, I might have considered it. Thankfully, that mood has passed, but... If this winter keeps up much longer, I might feel that desperate again.

My attitude has more cabin fever than I do. Everything is irritating the crap out of me. I can't even stand to read the news because, if it's good news, I'm jealous. If it's bad news, I'm hateful. Don't even let me catch a glimpse of a TV ad where some skinny bitch is eating yogurt on a beach. My brain goes into stalker mode and the only thing stopping me from finding that happy heifer and cramming a yogurt container down her throat is the fact that I'd have to go out and warm up my fucking car first.

Ugh!

I need to live somewhere with seasons that know how to come and go on a normal cycle. Who the hell wouldn't have cabin fever or murder on their mind living in a place when winter starts in October and lasts til it feels like leaving? I mean, we might see light-jacket weather sometime around the end of May. And that's only for between the hours of noon and maybe four o'oclock. Yeah, the sun will be up half the night, but it won't be so you can show off your booty-shorts and tank tops.

Seriously, I need a vacation. I'm not talking hotel and planned events. I'd settle for a roadside inn or truck stop and a decent vending machine selection - as long as it's somewhere warm and sunny. And the idea of any kind of a vacation brings up the other thing that makes me crazy about living here: you damn near have to cash in an IRA or some stock options to get out of here. It's not like you can just hop in your car (after warming it up) and take a day trip to a neighboring state. Even if we wanted to take a two-week trip and drive through the mountains, we can no longer just cruise through Canada anymore. No. Now it takes one of those passport card things to do that. It's like the universe is working to keep us here.

The only thing saving me from going completely mad this winter is my Netflix subscription. I've watched entire seasons of shows that a person with a normal life would never have time to squeeze into the past three months. I just ran out of episodes of "Breaking Bad" and there are still weeks and weeks and weeks  to go of this winter.

Someone (who happens to live where they feel the warmth of the sun on their skin all year round) made a comment to me about how living here must be good for writers. You'd think, wouldn't you? All this closed in solitude and darkness, right? Think again. Most writers are people who create characters they can hold conversations with and create worlds out of nothing because they have problems dealing with the one they live in. We're already a little crazy. I don't think solitude and darkness are things we need more of.

Yeah, so...

This coming week, I'm going to force myself to be more social. I'm going to get my head out of the book I'm writing and touch bases with all my social networks. I'm not really in the mood for people I have to actually deal with, but I can handle logging in and out of Google and Twitter. Maybe. We'll see.

Peace
--Free