Rebuilding Rob

As WordPress continues to recycle old prompts, I pulled another prompt from The Coffee Monsterz Co to respond to today

What do you love about this time of year?

If you’ve been reading my blog for any significant amount of time, it’s probably no secret to you that I don’t like winter.

I don’t like the long nights, I don’t like the short days. I don’t like the extreme cold. I don’t like windchill. I don’t like slow. Actually, it’s OK when it’s fresh snow. What I hate is when snow has been walked on, driven through, gotten car exhaust, mud and dirt splattered all into it. Dirty snow sucks.

In all seriousness though, this time of year has historically been kind of rough for me. It was around this time of year when I had my first experience with seasonal anxiety disorder while I was in college. I very nearly dropped out of school all together at that point. I had no idea what I was dealing with and to this day, I’m still not sure how I pulled myself out of it.

However, in the spirit of trying to find the good in all things, I do have to say I like the fact that winter reminds me that baseball season is right around the corner. Right now for the last two weeks, we’ve been something of a dry spell. The Super Bowl ended. Basketball and hockey are not enough to hold my interest. And I’ve been waiting for spring training games to start. Today is finally the day. Granted, it’s only one game, the Cubs versus the Dodgers– who will be opening the regular season in Japan at the end of next month. But baseball is back nonetheless!

Better days are coming. The weather is going to get warmer. The days are going to get longer. I think sometimes that’s a solace I can find in rock-bottom situations: things can only go up from there. I admit I am being a little bit melodramatic about “rock – bottom“ here. I do have perspective. I do know that my life is generally good, even with the Spectre of The Cheeto hanging over everything in my country right now

For decades, Detroit Tigers baseball began its spring training radio broadcast with Ernie Harwell reciting the above excerpt from The Song of Solomon. If you ask me what I love about this time of year, I will tell you that I love that it reminds me that the best is yet to come!

AI art courtesy of Artist.ai.

Thanks for stopping by Rebuilding Rob. Be sure to like, 👍 comment and subscribe to my blog below. It’s greatly appreciated! Also, feel free to follow me on social media as well! Check out my most recent posts as well as some earlier, related posts:

• Teacher Armor and the Saturday Clearing
• The Extra Day: A Ten-Year Memory
• Of Training Wheels and Christmas Lights
• Charity Starts at Home (And I’m Back in My Childhood One)
• The Muscle of Empathy

The article “The Voice of the Turtle” first appeared in Rebuilding Rob.