It’s cold outside, again, or should I say still? It is wet, too, and might freeze with how cold it is, but it will never turn into snow. Winter blues are a real pain. I’ve been craving some outdoors time for a while now, but winter and my daughter’s nursery blessed me with a truly bad cold, the kind I haven’t had for a few years now. It is recovery time, and it is still cold and wet outside.
Being locked inside (or at least advised not to go outside) made me think about the winter blues and whether it is a bigger problem for outdoors folk? Do we, as people who crave being outside and active, find the winter lock-ins worse or less bad than, let’s say, people who mainly enjoy knitting?
Winter blues (or its boring name: Seasonal Affective Disorder) is when we don’t get enough sun, in simple terms. This happens mainly because it’s too cold out there so we just huddle at home and wait for spring instead of going out and relishing the great watery cold sun of a winter day. But is winter blues just that? There is something about winter that can just sit in your bones and keep you constantly cold, just unhappy. I think the actual cold and the short days have a big part on the winter blues (and yes, the vitamin D too!) and the fact that we have so little energy.
But back to our question – is it bigger problem for us, or not? I’m not sure I have an answer to this. On one hand, not going outdoors (I haven’t even gone running for more than a week now!), not seeing much sun or trees, or getting wet and comfortably cold is really depressing. I cancelled some hiking and a couple of times we (the whole family) decided not to go out due to various illnesses we were fighting, so you can definitely feel the impact of winter. On the other hand, I’m going out for the weekend next week. I’ll be spending a couple of days fully emerged in the cold outdoors – the watery sun, the frozen ground, the drizzle and fog, and it will be great! Unlike non-outdoor people, we know without a doubt that we will be going out soon. It might be tomorrow or in a couple of weeks, but it will happen.
So given our extreme outings and getting the outdoors exposure, is our winter blues better (as in less bad…) than “indoor people”? I think so. The times we are locked in play a big part in getting us very excited about going out. Maybe this is part of what makes outdoor enthusiasts what they are – they want to go out, in any weather, so when they really can’t – they just plan for the next time outdoors. I know this is what I do.
Alas, enough of all this winter blues taking over – it is time to pick a map and decided where to freeze next weekend.
What do you think? Do we, outdoor people, suffer from the winter blues more or less?