September in November

In November, Louisa wrote a guest post for Ditch The Umbrella about her Thanksgiving experiences, promising a post-holiday update. Luckily for us, she’s blogged about another fascinating emotional calendar subject: seasonal dissonance. Here goes!

I wrote a post about a month ago about Thanksgiving—an emotional hotspot for me. I’m way overdue for an update, since Christmas is only two weeks away! Happily, Thanksgiving went off without a hitch this year, as it often does. My emotional mind was less charged up, which made for a much more enjoyable dinner for me, and especially my family. We went to my uncle’s house in western Massachusetts and feasted on turkey, squash, stuffing, and cranberry sauce: the whole nine yards. (Squash is my personal favorite.) I felt happy to be with my family and celebrate with them, and although the memory of that Thanksgiving fourteen years ago was still present, I also see how its effect on my emotions diminishes a little bit every year.

But of course, most people’s focus has moved to Christmas. It’s coming soon. I’m excited, and also quite proud of myself for already having most of my shopping done. With Christmas comes the cold weather, though, and this year it seems to be particularly frigid. In the past week, the high temperature has only been about 40° F, and that was last Saturday. The wind has made it especially bad, letting everyone know that winter is here to stay. Of course, if this were February, temperatures in the 40s would seem almost warm (at least in New England). But we have been cursed (or blessed, as most people would say) with some extremely warm days in November. According to weather.com, the high temperature in Concord on Nov. 13 was 65°. It felt more like mid-spring than late fall. That day was followed by 64° on the 17th, 56° on the 22nd, and 62° on the 23rd.

Regardless of how you feel about this type of weather in November, December seems particularly Arctic in comparison. I don’t like warm November days—such weather gives me a strong sense of seasonal dissonance, which happens when your mind is in one season and your body is in another. The calendar says Thanksgiving, but the weather says Memorial Day! This contradiction throws off my sense of stability, it makes me feel out of place, and it makes it far harder for me to get used to the December cold. For my sanity, I’m hoping that it won’t happen again, but the next time we have a really warm winter day—or even a really cold one in June—stop and see how your body and your mind react to the unfamiliar weather.

Weather: Frigid and gray.

Moods:

Anna – 7.5 out of 10 on the “so miserable I can’t get out of bed” to “jumping for joy” scale. She’s energized.

Hannah – 7 out of 10. On the one hand, it’s cold and gray. On the other hand, she is excited to be at the Athenaeum!

Advertisement

Read Full Post »

Embrace It!

Yesterday, while walking through Harvard Yard, I crossed paths with three shrieking girls. At first, their high-pitched voices concealed the meaning of their words, but after some careful eavesdropping, I deciphered:

Girl 1: “I feel it! It’s here! There are tiny snowflakes hitting my face! It’s real! AHHHHHHH!”

Girl 2: “You just have to embrace it! Embrace the snow!!!”

Girl 3: [Shrieks with laughter]

Girl 1: “Snow! AHHHHHH!!!”

Yes, indeed it snowed yesterday, but the flakes were tiny and silvery rather than fat and white. And really, if there isn’t enough snow on the ground to make an itty-bitty snowman, does it really even count?

But still, here’s to the amusing antics caused by frozen precipitation—and it’s only just the start of the season!

Weather: Chilly, blue skies.

Moods:

Anna – 7 out of 10 on the “so miserable I can’t get out of bed” to “jumping for joy” scale. She’s alert.

Hannah – 6 out of 10. She gave me a desperate look when I asked—she has a lot to do.

Read Full Post »

“Wait, what color was your sweater?!”

This morning, I woke up to heavy rain. “Thank goodness,” I thought, “I’m working from home today.”

Most people only have the morning house-to-car dash when it’s raining, followed by the car-to-office dash. Since I take the commuter rail to work, I typically start my rainy days with the I’ve-resigned-myself-to-getting-wet-and-can’t-miss-the-train rush to the station. That’s followed by a slightly more relaxed I’m-already-wet-oh-well amble from my destination to my office. At a minimum, I spend 40 minutes each day walking outside. So when it rains, or snows, or sleets, I feel it.

There have been lessons along the way. Like two Junes ago when it rained the whole month and I, not having rain boots, wore (and destroyed) several pairs of flats. Solution: rain boots. Or when, a year later, thinking I had conquered the rain with my trusty rubber boots, splashed through a deep puddle to find my toes drowning in chilly water. Upon further inspection, I discovered a massive crack along the rubber sole. Solution: duct tape.

Then there was the red raincoat disaster. I had planned to meet my father for brunch in a nearby square, only to wake up to a squall. Armed with my red raincoat and travel umbrella, I set off on the twenty-minute walk. By the time I arrived, the rain had soaked through every layer of my clothing. As I peeled off my rain jacket, I heard a gasp from my father’s direction. Turns out, the red dye from my raincoat had decided to run away with the rain, all over my brand new white (now pink) sweater.

There are times when I wished I had a car. But then again, I wouldn’t have nearly as many weather-related disaster stories to tell.

Weather: Rain earlier in the day, then some sun.

Mood:

Anna – 6 out of 10 on the “so miserable I can’t get out of bed” to “jumping for joy” scale. She’s tired.

Hannah – 6 out of 10. She’s also tired.

Read Full Post »

Mucous and Melancholy

This just in from my favorite science blog: “snot is mostly comprised of mucous secreted by the inflamed tissues of the nose, and dead neutrophils that swarmed in kamikazi-style to gobble up whatever bacteria or virus they could find.”

Sad but true: in the past seven days the temperature has dropped from an appalling seventy degrees to an equally appalling thirty-two. With the temperature drop has come a corresponding drop in physical well-being. I spent the whole weekend sneezing (although it didn’t keep me from loving Halloween) and Anna’s voice has been reduced to a croak. Flu season has begun.

Cold & flu season is exciting because it’s an opportunity to talk about the immune system, which I studied for The Emotional Calendar and which is actually really neat. Kevin – an immunologist, science blogger, and (full disclosure) friend – explains it better than I ever could here: it’s all T-Cells and Macrophages and suicide cells and other cool stuff.

But it’s hard to get excited about immunology when it’s 3 am, your head hurts, and you can’t breathe through your nose. November is the ugliest phase of fall. The leaves are off the trees, the sky is gray, it’s cold out, and everyone is sick. October may be a good month to channel Love Story – in November it’s all about fleeces, the world’s ugliest sweater. And of course there is the heavy anticipation of impending doom – by which I mean the rapid approach of the holiday the season.

November is a good month to stay inside and focus on something small and cozy. Like cellular biology, perhaps?

Weather: cold and cloudy. 43 degrees.

Mood:
Hannah: cold and cloudy but no longer sneezing, thank you. 5 out of 10 on the “I’m so miserable I can’t get out of bed” to “jumping for joy” scale.
Anna: 7. She already voted and two people want to be her roommate!

Read Full Post »

Stress, Sun, and Raindrops

One glance at my mood rating over the past few posts, and it’s obvious that, perhaps, I’m (momentarily) regretting signing up for 3 committees, 2 subcommittees, and a myriad of other engagements this year!

It would be one thing if I were just going to meetings after work. That would be manageable. My plummeting mood, though, was not caused by meeting overload, but by the fact I had so many meetings while continuing to search for a new roommate. The joys of roommatehood and Craigslist…

So far, the search has lasted three weeks. The first batch of candidates seemed fun, friendly, and responsible, but alas, 75 percent of them weren’t even able to move this month! Terrible luck. During the second go-around, there were also some strong candidates, but nothing worked out. At some point, I realized the chances of getting someone in for a November 1 start were slim to none. And that’s when my stress peaked and I started to panic.

I thrive on a good dose of stress, but once I go over my personal stress threshold, I feel terrible. I still do what I need to do, but everything becomes a chore. I shed my optimistic tendencies and morph into a seemingly-eternal pessimist.

This past weekend, when I realized I would have to scrap my November 1 roommate timeline, I ventured out to run an errand and, of course!, got pelted with raindrops. Even the sky was gloomy!

During a separate super stressed out moment, I went for a walk and—instead of gray skies—witnessed the most vibrant sunset I’ve seen in months. My optimism increased, and I paused to think about how strongly my mood is tied to the weather.

For me, at least, the weather seems to impact my emotional state when I’m already experiencing a more extreme mood. If I’m closer to my default state of general contentedness, weather seems to influence it less. I’m not sure if this is typical, so I’d be curious to know, how do you think weather affects your mood?

Weather: Overcast with a strong breeze. Rain earlier in the day.

Mood:

Anna – 7 out of 10 on the “so miserable I can’t get out of bed” scale. Things are looking up since I accepted the fact a roommate by Nov. 1 is a pipe dream. Something about reframing…

Hannah – 7 out of 10. She’s lonely at the office. Does someone want to throw pebbles at her window and cheer her up?

Read Full Post »

The Risks of Apple Crisp

The other day, my roommate made an apple crisp. Eva was celebrating an overabundant apple harvest and my mouth was just starting to water in olfactory anticipation when she walked into the living room.

“Ummmm,” she said, “the stove won’t turn off.”

Cue: a week-long battle with the stove and the gas company. So when I walked into the house one cold evening and smelled burning fuel, I expected the worst. Maybe the oven had finally imploded.

Instead, it turned out that my roommates had decided to make the leap and turn on the heat for the first time this year.

Turning on the heat is a big step. There’s an environmental aspect, of course, and a financial one too: heat is expensive in more ways than one. But for me, the most difficult part is the commitment to winter. Turning on the heat says: there will be no more surprise seventy degree days. Summer’s long over, and Indian Summer is too. Once the heat is on, there’s no denying that – oh god – the cold is here to stay.

(Interestingly, Wikipedia says that Indian Summer can last until mid-November. So maybe there is hope, after all.)

The other thing about turning on the heat is that it tends to bring a bizarre side effect. Every year when the heat goes on, I start to get these intense and realistic dreams. The dreams can linger as long as a month, and I always wake up feeling distraught. In one dream this week, my mother told me to abandon my career in favor of an (imaginary) job in public policy. In another nightmarish sequence, I spent what felt like hours pursuing the perfect pair of gloves in a labyrinthine box store.

Just like in real life, I never did find what I was looking for. And the stove? Sitting, unplugged, in the middle of our kitchen.

Weather: Sunny and just past the foliage peak. 45 degrees.

Mood:
Hannah – 6 out of 10 on the “so miserable I can’t get out of bed” to “Jumping for Joy” scale. Really tired of eating microwavable dinners.

Anna – 5 out of 10 for general life stress. Ask her about her erg.

Read Full Post »

Ditch the Umbrella!

When Anna and I decided to call this blog “ditch the umbrella,” we both agreed that the title might need some explanation. So I’ll tell you a story.

This past summer, I got really into cycling.

I’ve had a bike for years. As a student, I rode a fixie around campus, which was neat because I could pedal both forwards and backwards. When I lived in Jerusalem, I would commute to work by bike, an often dangerous feat among the Israeli drivers.

But this summer, I took the biking thing to a whole new level. I started biking over seventy-five miles a week – way more than I’ve ever done before. I got a pretty new road bike with real gears and ultra-thin tires. We had an absolutely, stunningly perfect summer, and so I figure I spent at least ten hours a week on my bike in the sunshine. Definitely a good thing for my vitamin D!

In her first blog post, Anna wrote about how as the fall sets in, she’s been feeling anxious. Anna’s anxiety comes from wanting to get up and move in autumn, which is funny because I usually think of fall as a time to settle down and prepare for hibernation.

But this year, I’ve been feeling anxious too. Because I know that my days on my bike are numbered. Pretty soon, this lovely New England fall is going to turn into a lovely, but hideously cold New England winter. The roads will ice over. And my bike will go into storage.

All of which is a roundabout way of saying that this fall, I’ve been trying to get as many hours of bike time in as possible. And so I’ve been riding in all sorts of crazy weather: heavy winds, torrential downpours, even the occasional flood alert.

Riding a bike through a tropical storm is certainly “ditching the umbrella.” But the point of this blog is not, literally, that we should spend more time in the rain. The point is that by “ditching the umbrella” I’ve become incredibly aware of changes in the weather, and the complex ways that they impact my life.

Which all means very little for me. Winter’s coming and I still feel anxious. So for me, this blog is about understanding the greater patterns in my emotional calendar, and about learning what to do with this new knowledge. When I say I want to “ditch the umbrella,” I mean that I want to achieve a greater level of seasonal embrace – both physically, and emotionally.

My great discovery so far: rainy days may make us feel under the weather. But riding a bike through a storm? That’s exhilarating.

Read Full Post »

Hello Emotional Calendars!

Many seasons, storms, and holidays ago, I (Anna) and my trusty co-blogger, Hannah, were introduced to the concept of the emotional calendar through our  research with Dr. John Sharp, psychiatrist and author of The Emotional Calendar. This wasn’t the first book either of us helped research, but something about it was different. We couldn’t get it out of our heads. Everywhere we turned, every article we read, every conversation we had seemed to lead us back to the main idea: that seasons, weather, cultural events, and personal milestones and memory all profoundly impact something called our “emotional calendars.”

Everyone has an emotional calendar. You thought you were cranky and agitated last Saturday because your friend showed up 20 minutes late to dinner? Maybe so. But what if the reason was something deeper, something you didn’t even realize was affecting you?

Last fall was the first time it dawned on me that I was under the influence of an emotional calendar. It was October and once again it seemed to me that the leaves had changed from a lush green to firey tones of yellow, orange, and red practically overnight. That I had fallen asleep one night and been jostled from slumber the next morning by the “oohs” and “aahs” of the traveling leaf peepers.

I felt restless. I had an overabundance of nervous energy. I was itching to do something.

And then I realized what was happening.

After college, I decided to move abroad. But in order to finance that, I had to work through the summer, so I didn’t set off on my great adventure until October of that year (three points if you can see where I’m going with this).

Last October, the changing landscape, the smell of apples, and the overabundance of porches dotted with pumpkins were triggering that anticipatory excitement all over again. But this time there was no new country to explore and so, instead, I felt off balance.

This year I’ve prepared myself for this hot spot on my calendar. Again, I’m feeling a bit restless, but this time I’m directing my energy. I’m meeting new people, volunteering for more organizations, and appreciating the crisp New England air. Oh, and I’m planning a trip to Prague and Vienna, because really, it’s about time for another epic adventure!

And, of course, I’m starting this blog with Hannah with the hope that through writing, we will both become more aware of our emotional calendars and embrace them with newfound appreciation.

How is your emotional calendar influencing you?

Read Full Post »