The Outside

And the importance thereof...

I grew up in the south where we had all the sunshine. I now live in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where you may not see the sun for a month.

I found out very early after moving to the Great Snowy North that the lack of sunshine is a problem for me. Seasonal depression is a serious pain, and I had it bad.

Average daily sunshine. Found here: https://www.swpenna.com/how-many-sunny-days-in-pittsburgh/

I ended up getting a special lamp to trick my brain into thinking there was sunlight in my office, which helped a little. Then a couple years ago I got kicked out of my office (dang kids) and banished to our finished attic. I put up a bunch of very nice LED strips in my office to do the same thing, which has been a huge help.

But still, the winter is hard sometimes. I had a bunch of work travel recently and I went almost three weeks with no sunshine. Nothing in Pittsburgh but clouds, rain in Arkansas, and rain in Missouri.

Until this past week when the sun started to break through the clouds, and then there it was.

This bright light in the sky hurts my eyes. Where did it come from??

I immediately felt better just seeing the sun for a few hours. It helped. A lot. But my job is pretty sedentary when I’m not traveling: I spend most of my time at a desk in my office (the small top window in the picture above, btw).

This weekend we had more incredible weather for February. Highs from 45-50 and mostly cloudless days. It doesn’t get much better than this. But I had a lot of stuff to do. I spent almost all day Saturday cleaning out one bedroom, breaking down my son’s old bed, cleaning, painting, and then assembling a new set of bunk beds for the kids.

Then Sunday we had a lot of chores to do around the house. Getting those wrapped up took all morning into early afternoon.

I was still trying to get things finished when my son came to me and asked if we could go outside and play dek hockey. If you’re not familiar, dek hockey (sometimes just called street hockey) is played in a rink like regular hockey, just with a rubber ball and in shoes instead of skates. It’s a big sport for kids in this area as it’s much cheaper than ice hockey, which is eye-wateringly expensive.

My son loves dek hockey. He likes to play most any sport he can convince someone to play with him, but dek hockey is his favorite. He plays in a league, but they take off December-February so he hasn’t had a chance to play much lately. And he was desperate for someone to play with him.

Despite still having work to do and my back hurting from putting those bunk beds together, we got our sticks and drove over to our local dek. We played for 30-40 minutes, not too long, then headed home.

He was happy, and I was too.

Spending some time outside in the sunshine, getting some exercise, and running around with my kid did more for my mood than getting every single chore done.

As an aspiring writer, it’s easy to make the decision to just sit at a computer all the time and let your fingers dance over the keyboard. It’s what you want to do. It’s what you need to practice. And it’s what might help pay the bills some day.

But don’t neglect yourself when you’re doing that. The advice to ‘go touch grass’ might just be one of the most important things you can do for yourself from time to time.

Now excuse me while I go enjoy some sunshine.