Dec
8th
2019
Almost · 2:37am Dec 8th, 2019
Soon.
In other news, I am working on a holiday story which I hope will be posted all at once in its entirety at some point near xmas. It will be a couple of chapters long, and be posted in its completed form if all goes according to plan. But that plan is complicated. Channeling an optimistic, cheery character is difficult to do with this damnable holiday depression that happens every year at about this time. But I am working on it. Now the pressure is really on, because I've talked about the project in public. So it really does have to be done by xmas. 
Good use of public commitment theory to motivate yourself!
Aside from psychological factors (“You will be happy! 24/7! It’s Christmas time, you don’t want to be a grinch, do you?!?! If you’re not super cheerful you’re RUINING it for EVERYONE! You just don’t have the holiday spirit!” Gah... I hate the Hallmark channel... and my family insists on having it on... 🙄) wintertime has definite chemical consequences as well.
I find that I need to get some daylight-spectrum lights and light up the spaces that I am in quite brightly (fortunately, LED bulbs make it feasible to throw four to six hundred “watts” of lighting at the problem without running the power bill out the roof; or being a fire hazard in fixtures that were only designed for sixty to one hundred actual watts of electrical power). However, towards bedtime I need to be sure to turn the artificial sun back off and just have low intensity reddish lights on, otherwise it messes up my (already chaotic enough) circadians.
Also, not getting enough natural sunlight means that vitamin D levels will be down; so I throw some supplements into the mix (and a fair amount too... the recommended daily allowance is set to prevent severe, acute conditions like rickets; it’s not nearly enough to make up for missing solar production of vitamin D).
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For me, it is PTSD.
Pretty much every xmas in memory (except for the past few) has had something horrendous happen. So I now associate xmas carols with trauma.
Yeah... for better or worse, we are pattern-finders... other than offering sympathy
all I can really say to that is regression-to-the-mean is a thing.
I won’t insult your intelligence with platitudes and baldface denial. I don’t talk about it much here, but I do know where you’re coming from, though.