Winter Doldrums

I’ve never thought I was a candidate for seasonal affective disorder but I have to think that may be what happened to me this month. It’s simply been a very tough month, and as the days of February dragged on I felt myself slipping further and further into the winter doldrums.

Primary sign? I stopped writing, I stopped reading (well, except for my Kindle) and I stopped participating. I didn’t exercise at all. About the only thing I did OK with is that I didn’t go off on any crazy eating binges. I mostly stuck to a reasonable diet with a few slip-ups here and there, pretty much par for the course. For the most part I would come home from work and get into bed. Not very productive.

It didn’t help that I started this month off being sick and have had a nagging cold the entire month. Even today I would classify myself as still 95% well. For a couple of weeks I was less than 50%. I had a trip to Chicago canceled due to their blizzard (I was there last week and all of their snow was gone, I couldn’t believe it), we got dumped on good a couple of time ourselves, I’m generally dissatisfied at work, my godfather was diagnosed with dementia, a family our son is close to lost an 18 year old child to leukemia, up until yesterday we still had our Christmas tree up, etc. etc. Just a real blah month.

Now the good news is I didn’t gain any weight this month – but I also didn’t make any progress on my goal of losing 40 pounds by June 30th. I have 24 pounds to lose in 4 months now, which is still very doable, but I’m never going to make it if I don’t shake these winter blues. So with tomorrow being March 1st and the start of a month that should mark our transition to spring (maybe not though, I do live in Minnesota!) it’s time to get re-energized and re-focused.

How are you doing this winter?