gattino
Justified & Ancient
- Joined
- Jul 30, 2003
- Messages
- 2,529
I was tempted to append this to the "getting old, death approaches" thread, but that's only because it sounds suitably maudlin.
For the last several days an old familiar sense of restlessness, anxiety about time passing, blues-iness rather than "depression" has lapped over me.
What's of fortean, or at least psychological interest is that the feeling is very limited in time and is as regular as clockwork. It afflicts me precisely between the the hours the sun starts to go down "unnaturally" early, and you have to put the lights on and about 9pm when it feels more reasonable to expect it to be dark at any time of year. In the daylight and later in the night im perfectly content. But in those early evening hours, every day, i feel left behind by life. What makes this doubly interesting to me is that as my facebook statuses and private messages attest, it's the same every single year and has been for as long as i remember. But then i forget it and am taken by surprise again each September.
Seasonal Affective Disorder is the term that leaps to the mind, but i don't think it quite applies as i understand that to be an all day funk, most deeply felt in the earliest months of the year, january and February. But to me, my mood lifts on the 2nd of January as it feels like we're on the upward slope into summer sunshine rather than the slow decline of a dying year. That's to say its clearly psychological and tied to the sense of time passing rather than a physiological response to a lack of magic rays from the sun. Or maybe its a bit of both.
I can't remember if this was leading to a question or not. I guess it's...does everyone else get this shift in mood with such precise limitations?
For the last several days an old familiar sense of restlessness, anxiety about time passing, blues-iness rather than "depression" has lapped over me.
What's of fortean, or at least psychological interest is that the feeling is very limited in time and is as regular as clockwork. It afflicts me precisely between the the hours the sun starts to go down "unnaturally" early, and you have to put the lights on and about 9pm when it feels more reasonable to expect it to be dark at any time of year. In the daylight and later in the night im perfectly content. But in those early evening hours, every day, i feel left behind by life. What makes this doubly interesting to me is that as my facebook statuses and private messages attest, it's the same every single year and has been for as long as i remember. But then i forget it and am taken by surprise again each September.
Seasonal Affective Disorder is the term that leaps to the mind, but i don't think it quite applies as i understand that to be an all day funk, most deeply felt in the earliest months of the year, january and February. But to me, my mood lifts on the 2nd of January as it feels like we're on the upward slope into summer sunshine rather than the slow decline of a dying year. That's to say its clearly psychological and tied to the sense of time passing rather than a physiological response to a lack of magic rays from the sun. Or maybe its a bit of both.
I can't remember if this was leading to a question or not. I guess it's...does everyone else get this shift in mood with such precise limitations?