I’m trying a new thing this year. I bought myself a light box (after some helpful friends who specialize in medical research pointed me toward some good specifications), and every morning I sit in front of it for half an hour while it hums at me, hisses its little ions all over me, and surrounds me in that kind of intense blue-ish light that makes the rest of the house seem dark as night in comparison. If you were to sit outside on a sunny summer morning, and if the sun hummed, hissed, smelled of ions, and didn’t heat anything up, it would be just like sitting in front of this light box.

I have no idea if it’s helping. I have no “control” of myself to compare against on a day-to-day basis. But I think I’ll keep it up because if I had to guess, I’d say it’s helping a whole lot. What I don’t know is if the light is helping, or if the half hour sitting in front of the light with cocoa and my laptop is helping. Maybe it’s the enforced time spent watching the birds fight over the pine seeds in the bank of trees outside my window, or reading my favorite blogs, or listening to a podcast. Maybe it’s the promise that, if my concentration and brains return, I could actually spend this time reading a real, honest to goodness book.

Or maybe it’s just the massive doses of Vitamin D and fish oil my doctor put me on. Who knows.

Whatever the reason, October isn’t getting to me the way I expected it to. We’ll see if all this stuff continues to ward off the “damp, drizzly November of the soul” (Melville7).