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Proud of Myself

On Monday, I got up on "the wrong side of the bed" and felt irritable much of the day. I am proud of two items:

One, I very carefully kept following the "I can only change myself" mantra, and every time I felt my irritable rancor coming to the surface, I thought through my emotions and my feelings and compared them to the reality of the day... it was a nice day... I need not let my emotions get the best of me... and I wanted to treat those I loved in a way that let them know I loved them. It took a fair amount of time to work though the thoughts and feelings several times through the day, but I *DID* have the success I wanted. I was able to successfully turn my feelings around several times and focus on things that were good and grand about the day, and also work on nourishing my love for my family.

Two, I spent some time analyzing why I felt so "irratable". After examining several different causes, many of which were red herrings, I came to the conclusion that my grouchy state was a result of a combination of a) having sore muscles from some physical exhertion the day before that was not a part of my normal routine and more importantly b) the shortening lenght of daylight had started to have its effect upon me. I already have known about myself for many, many years, that I have a hellacious time awakening in the morning when there is not natural light. As we work our way into fall and winter, the normal time when I want to arise (roughly 6am or 6:30am) is now dark, whereas in the spring and summer it is often very bright. This difficulty is perhaps a minor rendition of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) and I suspect many in my region suffer from this malady. The way I fix this and have done so for at least a decade or more is that I turn on all the lights in the bedroom roughly 1-2 hours before I get up. You might find this odd, that this artificial sunlight would make any difference, but it does. And this effect is rooted in very sound science... namely that light will stimulate the pineal gland in the brain.... the gland that is a part of the control system for the sleep cycle.

I am going to figure out the best and least intrusive way to accomplish the necessary additional light that I can.

PipeTobacco