That S.A.D. time of year.

Note to readers : my main effort, both physically and mentally, is in attempting to finish the modification and refit of the CLC Skerry – I made the decision to work through the winter such that I would be ready to launch at the end of February…..assuming that is that we get some decent weather. That means that most of my blog posts and video are based on the Skerry refit so for now there will be one boat related post once a week although I would like to make a return to twice a week blogging.

I intend that my second post of the week will be something else that’s at the forefront of my mind and what I should also add is that I intend to make posts like this one much shorter than usual and with that, to be as concise and snappy as possible. I have written several posts this winter that ended up in the bin, many of my posts about UK politics for instance which all seem to be about the slow drip of ideological poison and sheer incompetence of our government of so called change : I did also say that I would keep away from the subject because it’s so damn depressing with or without S.A.D. to contend with.

It’s been a difficult winter personally, quite honestly I was dreading it mostly due to my series of minor strokes which have severely impacted on my exercise : the one thing that did always help stave off the S.A.D. which I am prone to. On top of the various stroke related effects iv’e had a stinking cold – my partner says it was Flu with a very long tail, apparently the local hospital, where my partner works, has had several hundred cases.

I’m normally ok-ish up until late February but it was an early hit this year and I think because we had weeks and weeks where it was so dull and overcast that it was even difficult to work and film on the various boat projects that would at least occupy my mind. The combination of even a little bit of sunshine during the day plus a bit of exercise is what helps to keep the winter blues away – at least for a while.

My first real brush with S.A.D., even with not knowing what it was, was in my first year (first winter) of working as a junior staff nurse in an intensive care unit : I worked lots of nights that first year so most days I walked to work in the dark and because it was a dull and overcast winter often came home in the gloom as well. Not only that but we seemed to have a long run of patient deaths that winter and the ICU itself had hardly any natural light. When I add up the combination of living in low end digs in a dull and grey northern city while working nights in an intensive care unit it’s pretty obvious how it would come about to have a first experience of winter depression.

Most of the time, after that first time, I knew what was likely to happen near the end of winter and I soon found ways to avoid it : I moved into slightly better digs and made hard exercise in the gym a regular thing – that and spending as much time as I could in the outdoors just walking for exercise always lifted my spirits.

One of the stranger insights to come out of my later years as a nurse was when I also acted as a ‘medical’ moderator for a preparedness and self reliance website. At this time of year it always seemed to happen that someone would take offence at something that someone had said and just start an online fight over nothing. My experience nowadays is just to observe how nasty and vitriolic some corners of the internet become……and avoid them as much as possible. Having an internet ‘fast’ once a week, certainly at this time of year now seems to me to be essential. If S.A.D. or winter blues is something that you experience or you just feel well and truly pissed off at the world then my two top recommendations at this time of year are `: one…go for a walk on any day when it’s not chucking it down, and two….get off the internet and especially ‘social’ (antisocial) media.