The state of my February state.

I think what people sometimes don’t get about seasonal affective disorder is that it’s not like I’m just lying in bed, alternately weeping and stuffing my face with Entenmann’s donuts, utterly immobilized by despair.

Not even close.

It’s more like… have  you ever had the flu or a really bad cold that just completely knocks you out for a couple of days—and then when you’re well enough to get back to work or school, you feel… off somehow, like you’re two steps behind and everything suddenly got twice as hard to do?

That’s maybe a bit more like it.

My creativity—whether for writing or for cooking—is at its lowest ebb. I get a couple good hours per day in which to do some work, and which has to be prioritized immediately: school work? freelance work? blogging? which of these needs to get done now—because this is all I’m going to get done today…

And yet, even with all this in mind, this February has actually been pretty good. I’ve finally found a way to not listen (more often than not, anyway) to the jerkwad who lives in the back of my brain—my anti-Stuart Smalley—who says shit like, I don’t know who you think you’re kidding because you’re definitely not good enough or smart enough. oh, and P.S.? people don’t like you. I think thanks in large part to that new superpower, I’ve resumed working on a side project that’s been lurking in the recesses of my laptop. I’ve also got two papers to write in the next week or so, but I’m not feeling particularly overwhelmed by that, either.

And just ten days left in February? I’ll take it.