Death on the Side of a Mountain

My little corner of the world is making it hard for me to love her. Yes, I knew they got real winter here, when I agreed to the move. Yes, I knew what the work would entail, when I agreed to the move. Yes, I thought I had more time before those things had me spiraling.

I'm on day 15 of consecutive snow and I am WEARY! No, I'm SAD!

I joke about it quite often, but click the link, because SAD is a very real thing.

Now, I know no one likes a whiner. Secondly, the whiner doesn't need "Pollyanna" fixes or pep talks. Sometimes she just needs to experience her feelings and get it out.

It is quite difficult to feel motivated for anything beyond my bed or my couch. The sun has only broken through sporadically (an hour or two per day), but it isn't particularly cold either. Honestly, it's just BLAH and that's exactly how I'm feeling. I take a healthy dose of vitamin B and D to offset my mood, but I'm going to need to kick things up a notch and add the gym back into my mood stabilizing rotation. I am not one of those people that enjoys the gym.

Symptoms of SAD 

I write, when I have a micro-burst of energy or creativity and I LOVE to get out, when I can. The change of scenery helps more than anything. I walk around my job to get those steps in and I'm depriving myself of carbs (instead of binge eating them the way I truly desire), because frankly gaining weight isn't going to make me feel any better. I may or may not, also be compulsively online shopping (more on that later). 

This is why I left NYC thirteen years ago for sunny Arizona. However, the dangled carrot of living abroad and a lucrative job offer made me believe I could once again live with snow, or the threat of it. A threat was all it's been, for the first two and a half years. Flurries here and there, a short drive to work, a parking space in front of my door, and a late morning start, these were things I could work with. That all got monkey-wrenched at the end of last year. My day starts 90 minutes earlier (UGH!), it hasn't stopped snowing for 15 days (I mentioned that, right?), and my parking space is in a lot that is a block away and they never shovel it. Also, my close to work location has been relocated up the side of a mountain. You haven't lived, until you've nearly died, driving up that hill.

So, that's where I am, in this moment, right now.

If I'm being honest with you and myself, it isn't all bad, it just isn't ALL GOOD!

Here are some shots of things that have been VERY good since Christmas (and the snow that started upon my return to Japan).

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