Darkness makes me feel like this ^
I am from Southern Africa, where the sun rises at about 4.30am and sets at about 7pm in midsummer, and at about 7am and 5.30pm in midwinter. Now I live in Sweden where it is light all the time at midsummer and dark all the time in midwinter.
Darkness all the time makes you very very tired. They do have light cafés here where you can go and get a dose of sunshine and vitamin D, and when it gets really bad they send you to the sun as it is the only thing that will help. In 2006 I was sent to South Africa on medical leave for a month in December/January as I was suffering badly from SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder). I have never had it that badly again but winter makes me sooo tired.
This November is the darkest on record with 2 sunshine hours so far….this is what the forecast next week looks like….0 hours of sun!
I live in Northern Alberta (Canada) and come winter, sun is a rare and fleeting thing…it’s so hard not to get into a deep, dark funk! I love the idea of going somewhere to get some Vitamin D and recharge my batteries!!!
I saw a strange yellow glow in the sky this afternoon and wondered what it was. Been that long, I’d forgotten what the sun looked like 😉
I don’t know that I could cope with all that darkness. Where I am in the UK at the moment, sunrise is just before 8am and sunset just after 4pm; that’s quite dark enough thanks. Although there have been a couple of bright sunny days recently, most of the time the weather is quite grey and damp. I can feel the winter blues getting deeper every day, and most days I don’t even manage to wake up until past 9am. It makes normal life very difficult – how does one walk the dogs on a workday, other than by going out in the dark? The lack of daylight hours, and the fact that most jobs require us to be working in what little daylight there is, makes winter feel like being on a never-ending treadmill in the dark, at least to me – someone working indoors with no natural light (as I used to) could potentially go for days or weeks without seeing enough daylight to keep the circadian rhythms running properly. Are we sure humans aren’t supposed to hibernate in winter?
Yes the UK used to get me when I lived in London. Now I would love to get to London to get some light! Though we had an hour of sun today which recharged my batteries!
We’ve had a lot of dark, miserable, overcast weather here for at least a week, except for maybe 1 sunny day. I’d much rather have cold, crisp and sunny weather than this.
PS. At least in winter we did get some sun – well light anyway, we are talking Scotland – from about 9am – 3pm.
How every unusual – a “Light Cafe”. I told some young people some time ago that when I was a boy growing up in Scotland, we walked to school in the dark and walked back home at the end of school, also in the dark. The comment was “Yes, but that was back in the day” I responded indeed it was but unless the earth has changed its axis or the seasons have have changed it still happens today – it’s called a Northern Hemisphere winter. Glasgow is 55°51’N but you are further north than that so I can understand that your light and dark periods would be more extreme. In mid summer darkness came about 10:30pm.