It can be SO SEVERE, that's right folks, SO SEVERE that one can become actually psychotic due to lack of sunlight. (I've written about it here, here, here, and here. Also, on a lighter note, here.
Since I don't want to wind up psychotically depressed again, I sit in front of a sunlamp. A lot. My sunlamp is in my brightly-lit art studio, which also has full-spectrum lighting. It's very bright in here. Which is good. It helps me. But it's also getting kind of old.
I need to sit by the sunlamp in the morning, so I do that while checking my email and blogging. Then I get distracted by checking my email and blogging ... and besides, I just feel so much better when I'm by the lamp. So I'm here at 9:30 or 10 every morning, eating breakfast and messing around on my computer. I do that for a couple of hours.
Then, I have to be back in front of the sunlamp when it starts to get dark. My mood slumps, sometimes severely, between the hours of 4 and 7 pm. Now that it's getting noticeably dim by 3:30, I have to be here by that point, or the dreaded slump begins. On days when it's rainy and dark I just park myself here and stay all day.
The problem is that it gives me no flexibility in my afternoon schedule. Having lunch with a friend from 1 to 3? Can't stay an extra hour. Can't run errands afterward. Can't come home and exercise -- nope, need to sit in front of the damn lamp. And it's not like I can move the lamp; I need to be in my studio, where it's generally bright, or I start to slump. Anyway, having a light that emits 10,000 lux seriously strains your eyes if it's all up in your face in an otherwise not-brightly-lit room.
Say I want to run errands in the evening. Better make them short, because I need to get back to the damn sunlamp. That is, if I'm in any shape to run them at all.
About a month ago, I signed up for a volunteer shift at the local SPCA. They need people most during weekday afternoons, so I signed up for a 4 to 7 shift on Wednesdays without thinking about it. My first 4-7 is tomorrow ... I might be able to skip the lamp for one day. It's Thanksgiving week and I know a lot of volunteers will be out. I can't forsake the kitties. I really can't.
So I skip the sunlamp on Wednesday, and maybe I'm fine ... but the next day is Thanksgiving. Two days without lamp is really pushing it. So I'll have to schlepp it all the way to my friend's house and set it up on the counter top or something while we prepare food. Fortunately, my friends are understanding. And the countertops should have plenty of free space for a somewhat-bulky lamp. Right? Right. It's not like we're preparing a lot of food! Ha!
It's frustrating to have such a constricted schedule. In order to function well, I'm tied to one room of the house for at least an hour in the morning, and then for about 4 hours or so in the afternoon and evening. Like I said, it's depressing. But I know that the only thing that would be more depressing would be no sunlamp at all. Sigh.
This odd little poster sums it up pretty well.
Legal Disclaimer: If you decide that you simply MUST have this blacklight poster -- it would make a great gift for your stoner brother! -- and click through to purchase it, I will get something like $3 for my troubles.
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