Up Before Noon

I’d always heard about the “Seattle Depression,” but I never understood it until I moved to San Francisco.

Anyone who’s known me for any length of time knows that I’m nocturnal by default, and left to my own I’ll gradually switch to up all night (when I’m convinced I get “my best ideas”) and asleep through the day (when there’s nothing good on television anyway). I’m left wondering why I, who’s known me longer than anyone else, would decide to take a job working from home, but that’s a whole separate post if not its own weblog.

So I’ve been getting to sleep later and later and waking up later and later, and getting stressed out on all fronts, and getting more frustrated with work that has become a big impenetrable wall, and always waking up to a big gray fog covering everything. Not even waking up to darkness, which is depressing but kind of exciting. Just the fog that makes everything colorless and faded and seeming like the world just doesn’t exist past my block.

But yesterday I had to get up to go to the wedding of one of Mac’s friends, which meant I was exhausted by 10 pm, which meant I got home and fell asleep around midnight. And today I got up at 10 (and 10 hours of sleep doesn’t seem so slothful when you consider that I got about 4 the night before) and the sun was out! It really comes out in the morning; it was no myth! I felt like Noah getting the olive branch for the first time after several attempts resulting in nothing more than wet, hungry doves.

Sure, it’s obvious to anyone else, but still it’s remarkable to me how much a difference it makes. All the stress I’ve been going through seems manageable. I finally took out the trash and made a more solid resolution to take care of the dishes in the sink. Behind in my work? No problem; I got four good ideas just while sitting here. My jack-ass neighbor planting his fat ass on the steps next door to stare at people? Doesn’t bug me. Reading some right-wing asshole on a weblog saying that Hurricane Katrina and the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center were God’s retribution against the moral decay of New Orleans and Manhattan, and that Arnold Schwarzeneggar saved California from a disaster by voting against the gay marriage bill? Well, he’s welcome to his opinion!

I love the song “What a Wonderful World” and no matter how many times I listen to it, it still gives me the chills for being so earnest and uplifting. Used to be it was the line, “I see friends walk by saying ‘How do you do?’, What they’re really saying is ‘I love you.'” Today, it’s just the line, “I see trees of green and skies of blue.” A whole lot better than the monochromatic chill and listening to “Like the Weather” by 10,000 Maniacs — I was getting afraid I’d have to start listening to Morrissey or something.

And it’s going to be a long winter.