Man, afternoons suck sometimes.

Namely, on days when I have nothing in particular to do besides blog. Right now, I don’t have any big projects to work on and so I am kind of at loose ends. And for some reason, that has led me to feeling very blah in the afternoon. both yesterday and today.  I end up all sleepy and overheated and listless and lazy.

Part of that is nudity, admittedly. Yesterday I was hanging about naked because all my clothes were in the wash. Today. it’s because I will just be getting into fresh clothes after I shower before going out later so why waste a change of clothes?

Although considering how craptastic I feel right now, I am considering revising that estimation. I just woke up from a nap and already, I feel like going back to sleep. Pull a siesta and sleep the whole afternoon away. I feel drained and listless and vaguely cranky. That’s no way to pass one’s Sunday.

I mean, sure, technically, it’s a day of rest in the Christian tradition, but there’s rest and then there estivation  (the summer equivalent of hibernation).

And it’s not like it’s a good kind of sleep either. It’s lousy sleepy, all sweaty and smothering and full of too-intense dreaming that sometimes borders on the nightmarish.

Like, I just had a dream where I was exploring a haunted house set up for a movie, but it quickly turned real. So I was really getting into the whole thing, getting scared and tense like I was in real danger while also experiencing it like a horror movie and hoping for some really good scares.

I don’t remember exactly what happened, just scraps. Like moving slowly through dark rooms, looking into mirrors to see if anything cool would happen, and one confusing sequence where some kind of malign spirit that was after me went through this whole elaborate powering up sequence which I suppose was meant to scare me into thinking it would be this powerful demon at the end but nothing it did seem to really change anything.

Perhaps I was really exploring my own subconscious mind. You know, that dark forest of the mind outside the strong, clear light of the reasoning mind that I fear and that, in my more delusional moments, I like to pretend does not exist.

After all, if one defines one’s mind as everything one’s inner eye can see, then there can be nothing outside the light, right?

Especially when you are as “bright” as I am. I can do a lot of things with this powerful mind of mine, and that circle of light illuminates much that is dark to others.

It’s kind of funny. Normal, healthy people of average intelligence see and understand a lot less of the world than I do. And yet they get along in life a lot better than I do. They clearly do not need the sort of understanding I posses, at least in most things.

But I do. I search constantly for understanding because I only feel safe once I have figured things out. Once I have, in a sense, conquered them with my mind. I have so little faith in my ability to handle things in realtime that I can only relax when I can fully understand and predict things.

Maybe not predict them in detail, because that would make life incredibly dull. But I need to understand the range of variables or I get freaked out. That’s not a good way to go through life. Far better to have the totally unpredictable happen and build up your confidence in your ability to deal with it, or at least, to survive it.

But I don’t wanna.

I definitely feel like my horizons need expanding. But I spend so much time merely coping. It’s hard to build up the confidence to face the unknown when you feel like you are just barely holding your guts in most of the time.

I wish I could escape that feeling and feel whole and hearty and ready for the world instead. It happens now and then but not nearly often enough. Most of the time I feel tired and dull. I manage, but I am not exactly attacking life with great zeal.

Plus I think the change in the weather is affecting my mood. Less sunshine means less happiness. Maybe this is the year when I will finally get around to getting full spectrum bulbs for all the lights in my room. Hopefully that will help. Plus I still, in theory, have that light therapy device in my possession…. somewhere.

I definitely feel more cheerful on sunny days. Whether it would qualify as actual Seasonal Affective Disorder is debatable. A lot of people find sunny days cheerful. I would go as far as to say that if you live someplace where sunshine is rare (like most of the Northern Hemisphere), the association between sunshine and happiness is so strong as to be nearly universal. All our visions of paradise or “our happy place” are sunny.

Perhaps it’s cultural, perhaps it’s seasonal, perhaps it’s our bodies getting really excited about producing some freaking vitamin D.

My own vision of basic happiness is, shockingly enough, not much different than other naked beach apes. A sun-dappled meadow, a light breeze, happy animals wandering about, and happy families soaking it all in.

Oddly enough, the beach is only in there at the periphery. I love the beach but I have never imagined it as paradise, possibly because I grew up around beaches and so they are earthy, mundane (but lovely) things to me.

I imagine the visions of peoples that have a surfeit of sunshine are different, and involve a lot of shade and water. Or during the rainy season, their happy place is indoors, warm, and dry, like on Ray Bradbury’s Venus.

But here’s the thing : almost nobody has a vision of paradise where it’s night.

We’re creatures of daylight, after all. Diurnal. And our visions of paradise are really visions of our long lost ideal habitats.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.