SAD

Time for a blogpology*: I haven't updated this in a bit. I hate when people apologize about not writing in their blogs - I mean, a blog is just an online journal of sorts, and if you don't journal for a week or a month or whatever, no one should be like "way to not type out any observations or stories, jackass." So this is the last blogpology I will issue...savor it. Link to it, so you can, at any moment you feel you are owed an apology, go to it.

I have a good excuse: I, like many people living in Seattle, suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder. Most people who are afflicted with SAD feel its numbing effects in the winter, while they are driving to work in the dark, working in your dark cubicle, driving home in the dark, watching reruns of Everybody Loves Raymond in the dark. It's a lack of sunlight.

But with me, I suffer from SAD during the summer. I wake up and it's gorgeous out and I want to watch DVDs. It's noon and the sky is cloudless and I want to play another game of Scrabulous. It's after work and Green Lake is full of young people exercising and playing volleyball and bicycling around and I just want to blog blog blog. I hate nice weather. It's great to look at and all, and it's nice I don't have to put on a jacket everywhere I go, but beyond that it's just the worst.

The problem with nice weather is it's so full of unused potential, you know? It is great for everything I'm not doing: Going on a date, mountain biking, sailing, living in a cottage in the Italian countryside, driving a convertible, white water river rafting, chopping down trees, etc. (Oh yes, I do enjoy chopping down a good tree. For the sake of the environment, I control this impulse. But if I had my way, look out Oakie, you know what I'm saying? Be aware, Poplar. I'm coming for you.)

Instead, I am working in an office or driving in traffic. But the WORST is that even when it's nice in my free time, I'm doing something and it's just not that great, you know? Like I'm riding my bike, and I'm thinking, I'm gonna have to say "On your left!" to that schmoe. Or I'm writing an awesome play in my notebook while sitting in a park and there's a family walking by and they absolutely love each other and the kids are playing and I'm thinking "An ant is crawling on my shoe. If he crawls on my leg he is a dead ant. The shoe is fine, but the leg is a no-no. Then he's in biting range, and that is when I'm bringing the hammer down. He's on the lace! Should I do a pre-emptive swat, or let him make his move? Come on, ant, what's it gonna be? How are you--WHAT THE--! DAMN MOSQUITO JUST BIT MY NECK! Stupid ant was just distracting me...they're working together! They are in cahoots! CAHOOTS!"

You know? I can't enjoy the nice weather, I can never just sit back and enjoy it. I like life, even though it's miserable, you want to know why? Everyone's miserable. The mother at the grocery store with three screaming children is miserable, the grocery checkout dude making $10 an hour is miserable, AND the super rich, super beautiful, super talented MOVIE STAR is in the magazine at the grocery checkout line talking about HER MISERABLE LIFE. Everyone is miserable, and we're all gonna die. It's like this guarantee, this warm fuzzy existentialism.

I read that in The Stranger, in April there was an issue with this cover story. The author basically makes a list of generalizations about Seattle based on a few friends and a couple book readings (which seems kind of, well, a pretty insubstantial subject for a cover story, but whatever). Anyway, the author says this:

"I feel like most people in Seattle have "given up on life" due to a comprehensive knowledge about existentialism but in a "good" way that doesn't feel bad at all. They wake up, go to work copywriting shampoo advertisements, go home, lie in fetal positions facing the back of their sofas, and feel beautiful and existentially awesome."

THAT IS EXACTLY RIGHT.

And this beautiful existentialism fits, usually, with Seattle's weather. It was weather that made me want to move here, actually. I was walking outside last September in Evans City, Pennsylvania, and it was raining, and I was like: "Me and the rain get along pretty good. I should move to the most famous rain capital of America." And so I did.

But it's really tough when you got all that sunlight and frolicking and hopefulness out there, like the past two weeks, oh, it's been terribly, awfully, horrifically gorgeous outside. I can't stand it.

I don't know how to cure Summer SAD. In the winter you go into a room with a light. I'm not joking - that's the cure for SAD. You stand in front of a light. It's the best cure ever. But for the summer, I don't know. I guess stand in the show for an hour with the lights off and play Radiohead? What if I get pruny?

I just don't like the heat, okay? I feel sluggish, I get sunburned, the bugs are all out. People always want to "do things" and "go out." I spend more money, gas is more expensive, traffic is worse. There's more pedestrians. TV sucks. Kids are all home and running around, and it's plain hot! Argh...

If you need me, I'll be in the shower.


*Blogpology: At the beginning of the post I thought I had invented this word! I was so excited to name the phenomenon of apologizing about not blogging, since most blogs do that! But then I Googled it and found out it's been used like a million times, so my ego became deflated. The same thing happened when my friend was pitching bank slogan ideas and I suggested "Get More Bank For Your Buck! (TM)", which I was super excited about as an idea until we looked it up and, yeah, just about every bank in the English-speaking world has used this slogan.