SAD, not sad

I seem to spend an excessive amount of time apologizing, both to my sadistic Master and to my readers. It has been days and days since I posted here. Be assured that I'm not in the midst of some sort of crisis, and the fiend continues to make me very happy - albeit frustrated. His way of responding to major problems is to turn back to early chapters of his plan book and proceed from there at an outrageously slow pace. In fact, it frustrates both of us, but I can't fault him. It is the best way to make sure the foundation isn't crumbling, and to ensure that I have absorbed all my lessons and will be fully committed to whatever goals he has in mind for me.

(And yes, he really does have a written out plan. Which he is continually forced to revise to correct for our tendency to race ahead to fast, followed by a crisis. He is quite correct in allocating blame for his elevated blood pressure to me.)

What makes things trickier now, in all parts of my life, is that the SAD season is setting in. That's Seasonal Affective Disorder, for those of you not familiar with this very real condition stemming from the stupidest of causes: not enough light. Particularly, not enough sunlight, whether due to shortened days or too much cloud cover. I've been aware of having it for about 25 years, from before I knew the condition had a name and a definition. Southeast Michigan is a very bad place to live when you have SAD. It's not at all as bad down here outside of Washington, DC, which is one reason I chose to move here when I was freed from my miserable marriage. Unfortunately, SAD gets worse as you grow older, so after a number of years here the benefits aren't as apparent.

It's particularly hard to get going in the morning these days, as Daylight Savings Time is allowed to go on for at least 3 weeks too long. Supposedly, this was done under pressure from the candy industry. If it stays light longer, more kids can go trick-or-treat later and this longer, meaning bigger candy sales to meet the demand. Though I don't know. With parents being so nervous, the throngs have been reduced to a trickle anyway.

So I'm crawling along, setting my clock a little later, dawdling getting out of bed, and then dragging myself off to Starbuck's (unfortunately, the best nearby option) which somehow allows me to get to work on the job of job hunting in a way that my dining room table cannot manage. But I'm wasting so much time that at the end of the day I'm left with neither hours nor brain cells for blogging or personal correspondence. Even my poetry is hibernating. Maybe things will be better after we change the clocks back and 7 am again looks like what 7 am is supposed to look like.

So. That is my apology for my recent periods of silence. Oh - and I really am quite an expert on SAD and its peculiarities and possible treatments. I do know about light boxes - and have 3 of them. I take all sorts of medications and am being treated by a highly respected and quite brilliant psychopharmacologist, so unless you know of some brilliant new advance that came out in the last couple of weeks, I probably know more about it than you do. I'm sorry to sound snide, I don't mean to. Well, not totally... it's just the situation is frustrating enough without people implying that if I only did the right thing I'd be ok. I have a VERY severe case of it - so bad that I would be clinically depressed for 5 months every year back in Michigan, and would have killed myself except that who has the energy or focus to organize suicide when you've got SAD?

Anyway, I'm not that bad now.
But I'm slow.
Dulled.
And any brain cells I can muster are devoted to
finding a new job
and
always
the sadist who anchors my life.