black dogge, black-and-white cat

[jazzfish]

Slowly coming to terms with the idea that I have been in a depressive trough for several months. It's not ideal. I think it's been a vicious cycle, with not sleeping well engendering a lack of focus, which reduces my ability to manage various aspects of my life, resulting in high stress levels, which makes it harder to sleep, etc. And for sure the lack of sunlight isn't helping matters. (A few years ago I was Really Annoyed when I realised how huge an effect the amount of sunlight had on my mood... walking down the street and thinking "I am stressed and kind of unhappy and I feel like I ought to be depressed but instead I'm actually feeling pretty good about things... oh, the sun is out for the first time in a week." Annoyed because whether there's sun is not really under my control, except in the sense of "don't live in Vancouver.")

So I'm trying to get more exercise, in the hope that that will improve my sleeping and break the cycle. But I'm not real optimistic. This has been a problem more or less for a long time. I give myself six months; if I'm not doing better by May at the latest then I'll start looking into pharmaceutical solutions.

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That was not where I expected this entry to go. The actual reason I opened the Post Entry window: Mr Tuppert and I have a Routine in the mornings where I have a work meeting, and he sits on the ottoman next to me and gets pets. Today's meeting was actually a whole series of them (still ongoing, actually) but I didn't have to be functional, just mostly pay attention so I know what's coming down the pipe. So we had a nice long pet, punctuated by occasional "done now" swats/bites at my hand followed by "hey you aren't paying attention to me" bats at the back of the chair.

Those times when he rolls on his side and half-closes his eyes are why I have a cat.

He still gets bored, and he still doesn't really play: his favourite toy is My Hand, which is problematic. I got him a laser pointer and he'll play chase-the-red-dot somewhat, but he has no interest whatsoever in other toys (jingle-ball, crinkle-toy, thing-onna-string). It's a problem because when he gets bored he wants me to play with him, and I do have to do work sometimes.

But he's a good kitten, and I'm happy he's here.

Oh, and after finishing Alix Harrow's The Ten Thousand Doors of January, it turns out his full name is Mr Julian Winterhill Tuppert. 'Julian' (with a soft J, so 'Yule-Ian') for the lost explorer in 10K Doors, Winterhill for the intelligence agent in Aspects. Always nice when a name settles in properly.

Comments

[reedrover]

Congratulations on discovering his full name!

Achaosofkittens got the cats an automated laser dot toy. They will chase the dots for a while and then attack the messenger, which ends up with dots on the ceiling and the toy itself rolled under something. Much more fun that way.

[jazzfish]

Ha! I hadn't even considered an automated red-dot. Not sure how well it would work; a lot of the fun with this one seems to come when I walk it around a corner out of sight, so he can hide just at the corner and pounce on it when it comes back. But may be worth looking into as well.

[reedrover]

Separate comment on the depression/sun thing: I hear you. And I know you can’t just up and buy a house with the right shaped and oriented windows to help fix it like I did. Can you add more full-spectrum lights to your new place?

[jazzfish]

Moving away from the lower mainland is a solution I've been seriously considering. The point of moving here was to see if this is a place I want to stay, and how much of wanting to be here was driven by "wanting to not be in Fort" and nostalgia. I'd forgotten how harsh the grey winters are for me. And at this point "gets some actual sunlight" is high on the list for anyplace I land.

Meanwhile, getting full-spectrum bulbs is probably a good idea, thank you. Have you any recommendations? (No worries if not.)

[vvalkyri]

In the meantime there's also happy lights in the morning. Try and have it above your eye level - it's an iPad size very bright box

[(Anonymous)]

I don’t know how far you want to get from the liberal cities, but I found the winter climate in Calgary to be quite decent the two winters I spent there. Lots of breathtaking sun over cold. But also -17F and blowing snow, so there were downsides about walking to work.

I don’t have a particular brand to recommend, no. I do find the best selection of bulbs are in the garden stores / gardening section of hardware stores. I don’t buy the marketed-for-people ones because they are double the price and too blue for me. If you can’t grow a plant under it, it’s not the sunlight that I want.