It's funny how it happens. The days start to get shorter... the temperature drops... the leaves start to fall... and even though it can be a really beautiful time of year, my heart starts to sink. It sneaks up on me, but by around this time every fall, mornings are starting to get more and more difficult for me.

I'm wary of blaming too much on the seasons, as I feel like it can be a way to deflect responsibility for my own state of mind. But I gotta say, I really hate the feeling of being unable to drag my ass out of bed in the morning, even after 8 or 9 hours of sleep, and I really feel like the decreased hours of daylight are a huge part of that. (See here for some info about "winter blues".)

I guess it's time to dig out my Litebook.

But I'm also trying to remember that mood is so very much a state of mind. My friend Ashley had a lovely reminder on her blog last week, and borrowing the format for affirmations, I made my own:

(breathing in) I don't need the weather to be different
(breathing out) to enjoy this very moment for everything it offers.

PS. I should mention that if you also suffer from SAD, and have been considering investing in something like the Litebook... You can use the discount code they gave me for ordering by phone or online, and get 10% off. It's SP001.

If you're a regular reader, or a friend of mine, then you know that I suffer in the wintertime here in Vancouver. The serious lack of sunshine does a number on me, and I have a really hard time staying positive. For a few years, I tried to wish it away, but I've finally found some relief in just admitting it – I get depressed in the winter. It sucks. But it's not a character failing; it's actually largely chemical thing.

So last year I bought a Litebook, and blogged about it. Then, a couple of months back, I was contacted by the president of the Litebook company. He was going to be in town from Calgary for a few days and wanted to meet for coffee to talk about the new model they had just released.

So we met up one day for an hour or so, and shared our stories of Seasonal Affective Disorder. He told me how he had first tried out light therapy in the very early days of its promotion as a treatment, when it was largely considered quackery, and how it had been the only thing that helped him. The lights they used back then, though, were big, awkward, and entirely not portable. He decided to try and find a way to produce something small and light and easy to use. The rest is history, to use a cliche, and thus the Litebook was born, using special LED technology to simulate the two peak wavelengths of sunlight.

Hello world.

It is January in Vancouver and it is so grey outside that some days it feels like it never even got light out. It just gets a bit less dim, and then gets dark again.

Today is the second day in a row for a heavy rainfall warning. Last week it pissed all week except Saturday.

When this happens, I feel super-duper shitty. Yup, Seasonal Affective Disorder pity party, right here. All welcome, if you can put up with me.

It's hard to explain to people who don't experience it. I'm struggling for some words to try, but basically it's just a fog of fatigue, lethargy, and generalized blues.

On the plus side, there is the Litebook. This is the one bright light (pun intended) in my mornings this winter. And I was recently given a new Litebook Elite by the president of the Litebook company, who I met a while back, after he saw my blog post from last year. (Thanks, Larry!)

I have been meaning to write a more detailed review about the Elite model. It's coming, I promise. I'm sitting in front of the thing right now... my insurance against a really gloomy day. However, it doesn't take care of the pile of stuff that I need to do more urgently. So stay tuned...

PS. I should mention that if you also suffer from SAD, and have been considering investing in something like the Litebook... You can use the discount code they gave me for ordering by phone or online, and get 10% off. It's SP001.

All right.

I am here to shamelessly promote the Litebook. If you are one of the many people who suffers in the wintertime from low energy, depression, or a whole host of other symptoms that can accompany the season of low light, then you should seriously consider investing in one of these.

I've been using mine for just over a week now, and I don't think it's an overstatement to say that the improvement was dramatic and pretty immediate. My days of sleeping nine+ hours and then wanting to crawl into bed for a nap all day seem to be over. Since i started using my Litebook, I sleep like a normal person again (between 7 and 8.5 hours, ish) and I don't feel tired all day. I feel... normal, I guess, again. I feel how I am accustomed to feeling, when I'm not in the midst of SAD season. My mood is also quite a bit better - and I'm not the only person to notice the improvement in me.

It's been quite the relief. I mean, obviously thirty minutes of light in the morning can't change the circumstances of your life, but it certainly seems to do something to improve my day-to-day perception of those circumstances. Kind of like anti-depressants for some people, I suppose. And I would personally rather sit in front of a funny little box of LED lights than start adding chemicals to the mix.

They don't come cheap - mine was $300, and I got a super-good deal. But I really can't say enough about mine so far. My only regret is that I didn't get one a long time ago.