Halló halló!
It is November in Iceland, which means our days are getting noticeably short and our daylight more scarce. For me personally this is the most difficult time of the year. There is something about moving into the heart of darkness that gets me on a psychological level. Even though we have the same amount of daylight in late January it feels substantially different, simply because I can welcome each minute of each day that the day grows longer. It feels different to move into the light.
One of the main manifestations of this for me is that it messes with my sleep. You might think that these long stretches of darkness mean that people just want to sleep all the time, but the fact is that—in my case, at least—it messes with my circadian rhythm. Apparently if you don’t get a certain amount of daylight it interferes with your body being able to produce melatonin, which is the hormone that makes you drowsy. So I often feel tired but have a hard time getting drowsy and therefore getting to sleep. SAD1 also makes me less able to concentrate on tasks, and affects my mood, appetite and general level of energy. Bah.
Making it slightly more bearable is this puppy:
Yup, this is a daylight simulator light that normally gets hauled out of storage around mid-November and put back a couple months later. Along with having it up and around, I always make sure to take long walks in the middle of the day in locations where I can get the most light. Because the sun rises so low in the sky these days it often doesn’t get above the buildings, so walking along the seashore is something I make a point of doing, to get unimpeded daylight.
Question time!
In the last post I invited paid subscribers to submit any questions they had for me to answer, and there have been a few already. I will get to them all systematically, I promise.
The first comes from Lissa, who asks:
Who is your favourite author (in any language) and why.
That’s a tough one, I must say. I don’t actually have a single favourite author—there are many authors that I greatly admire, and some of whose books I have read more than once. I am a big fan of the classics, especially classic English literature. I love Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and the Brontë sisters (Jane Eyre is my all-time favourite novel, I think I’ve read and/or listened to it around six times).
Another English author I love, who may not quite qualify as “classic” is Daphne DuMaurier. I adore her books. She has a way of writing that pulls me in every time, so effortless yet so compelling. Her novels are psychological suspense, a genre I really enjoy when it is done well—and she does it really well. Rebecca has been one of my favourite books for decades, but it was only recently that I realized why her novels resonate so strongly with me. It is because she has such an incredible way of portraying narcissism, and narcissists, in her books. She doesn’t actually call it that—after all, her books were written before Narcissistic Personality Disorder was even included in the DSM2. Rebecca, for instance, is a textbook study in narcissism and gaslighting. As many of you know, the topic of narcissism is one that is close to my heart, so understanding why I am so drawn to DuMaurier’s books was kind of a lightbulb moment for me.
What about you? Care to share who your favourite authors or books are? I’d love you to tell me in the comments.
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Seasonal Affective Disorder - best acronym ever
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
Love lamp, we get a touch of the sads in my family due to European ancestors from Denmark. I love your letters from Iceland
Oh, yeah, SAD lamps are wonderful. Now that I've moved down to DC, I don't need them as badly as I did when I lived in the UP.
I also missed green, so I got a bunch of air plants, and hung them in my windows with florists' wire. They are very easy to take care of (I'm not great with plants). Also had a small hydroponic setup by my monitor at work. It included a grow light. Usually, I grew snapdragons in it, because I like them and they grow fairly quickly. Having a bit of green (and sometimes other colours) to rest my eyes on for a few seconds and the light really helped, too.