The Monday of a Month That Wouldn't Die

A dusting of snow still falls, meaning havoc is being created throughout my region. As usual, I'll leave well after the morning rush but have to expect it could take a while for my bus to show up, since we have magic transit here in Vancouver... it disappears whenever there's snow.

Can I tell you how happy I am it's February on Friday? Can I? I don't think there are words. I woke up this morning and looked outside, saw the snow still falling, but more importantly, I saw daylight before 8am. This is huge.

Me and winter weather, we're not on very good terms. It's the darkness I hate. I wandered into work once and a coworker asked how I was doing. I groaned aloud and muttered "Very seasonally affected, thank you" to the guffaws of everyone else.

Thing is, "seasonal affective disorder" is no laughing matter. Fortunately, I'm more on the "winter blues" side of the coin than the "SAD" side, which is much more accute and punitive. From November to February, I more or less just hang on for the ride. I'm never possessing much energy in the winter, and my moods are seldom as bright as they could be.

Now that it's almost February, though... things will be improving rapidly. At this time of year, there's about 2.5 - 3 minutes of additional daylight here each day in Vancouver (changes depending on your latitude). It's light from about 7:30 to 5 now, and in just a few short months, it'll stretch from almost 3:30am to 10pm. By the end of February, about 7am to 6pm. God, how I love the longer days.

But I also love the slow creeping march of daylight. A little more today, a little more tomorrow... Time changes daily, just another one of nature's reminders that we can stagnate and live in limbo as much as we like, but Mother Nature will not. Change will come whether we want it or not, as is evidenced by nature.

And as is evidenced by my life. And this is why I only do rough ideas of things I want to achieve rather than itemized gameplans. Life throws too many variables out the window and sometimes gameplans need massive reworking. As this month draws to a close, I'm finding myself in a completely different position than I wanted to be in. I've had a lot of things go wrong this month, costing me a lot of money, and now I need to figure out how to get my footing back and, more importantly, start getting my head back on the gameplay, and figuring out how the changing state of finances will impact some of those goals I had been setting. It's really frustrating when life keeps tossing new challenges your way. I want to shout to the cosmos, "DUDE, it's HIS turn now, ALL RIGHT? Or HERS, or THEIRS, but, please, fuck right off!" but I don't think it'll get me far, plus, things could be way, way worse than they are, and I'm just trying to grin and bear it, pretend I'm amused by the daily mounting weirdness that is my existence.

The January bodycount continued yesterday when I got up and thought "What the hell's with that weird dripping sound?" which then proceeded to be not a dripping at all, but my CD changer apparently thinking it's running the Indy 500 and spinning non-stop, clicking madly. Not like I've used it much in the last couple years, what with the iPOD and all...

...But now that I have no iPOD and no CD player, I'm living in a strangely quiet world. Thank god I have my laptop, but now I'm nervous for its future. I'm thinking, where music's concerned, no, there cannot be just one. I'm hatching a plan to change the drowning-in-silence lack of music in my life. I won't bother replacing the CD player at all. I'll instead buy an 80gig iPOD. Which is out of my budget for at least a few weeks. Maybe not. But I need a new cellphone (having it turn off randomly for no reason at all is not particularly good for one's social life) and have bonus money from my cell provider, so I was thinking something swank like a Razr, maybe this weekend.

After all, having cool accessories is one way to feel cooler, right? Nothing like phoning people for no reason so you can look cool with your new $300 phone you got for a nickel and a limb-endangering eight-year contract or something, right? Don't we all like to show off our new toys for about 27 minutes when we get 'em? Then we see some punk-ass 17-year-old with the model one notch above ours, about which we told ourselves at the shop, "But this cheaper one's just as practical and has all the trimmings... that one's just for show". So then we give up showing off our more pragmatic model since the 17-year-old's making a chump out of us.

Yeah. I'm done with January. Are you done with January?

I've still not gotten everything done around the homestead I feel needs to be done for me to get this year started on the completely right track.

Did I whine about my broken clothes dresser yet? No? Even THAT died this month. I can't pull the drawers out, I have clothes everywhere. My room feels like a cross between an ode to tornados and a drag queen's clothing store after the annual Liza Minelli tribute sale. It's fucking chaos, man. So, this weekend I deal with the wrath of Clothes with No Home, and organize my bedroom. Which means I finally face the teetering piles of bills I once had to pay but have now caught up with, and can be properly filed away. (Hey, caught up. Yeah, that's right!)

That I have managed to stay relativately upbeat in a month that has had a lot of irritating happenings is something I'm very pleased with. I'm not in as good of a headspace as I'd like to be, though, and some of it's just for show. I am aware, too, that on the cosmic level of things, my recent woes have been childsplay. Doesn't mean I don't deserve to get a little grumpy here or there.

But, hey. When I get to the other side of this rough patch, life is gonna be a beautiful thing. I'll have the new phone I've wanted for a couple years, the iPOD I've wanted a couple years, my room will be organized. And much, much more, right? Yeah, absolutely. So, like I say. It's been an irritating, frustrating month, but it's all stuff that's easily remedied with a little of our friend Mr. Cash, something I know is coming my way in March, so... as I said at the start of this, I'm just hanging on for the ride. Wanna come with?

Okay, well. I'm off. Time to go wait for imaginary buses in the transit land of Never-Never. What fun. Have a stellar Tuesday, minions.