Special thanks once again to rojie for today’s prompt. if you haven’t done so already, definitely check out her blog justrojie.com.
How do you prepare for the upcoming winter season?
I hate winter. I hate it with the passion and intensity of 1 trillion burning suns. Which is ironic, because we don’t see anywhere near enough sun during the winter here in Michigan.
When I was a little kid, I thought I just hated winter because it meant the end of baseball season. Then, of course, there were those commercials they would show near the end of the summer for Cedar Point, showing the park covered in snow. It just made me want to go to the park even more. Mission accomplished for Cedar Point’s marketing people.
But as I got older, I heard a famous quote by Rogers Hornsby:
People ask me what I do in winter when there’s no baseball. I’ll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.
That’s me to a T. I’ve never really taken to winter sports. In fact, last year was really the first time I tried going to any sort of outdoor winter market. I wish I’d gotten into that stuff at a younger age. I wish I’d picked up a winter sport back then, just so I’d have something to look forward to during the season.
So when you ask me how I prepare for the coming winter, I don’t know. I try to hunker down and stay alive until springtime.
One winter when I was in college, I had my first real experience with seasonal depression. I found myself refusing to leave the house. I dropped three of the four classes I was taking that semester and nearly dropped out of school altogether. To this day, I’m not really sure how I pulled myself out of that funk. I think I just wrote off that semester and got back into my groove once the weather warmed up, but for the life of me, I couldn’t tell you today how I survived it. For the life of me, I don’t know how people who live in extreme latitudes like Alaska—where they deal with prolonged days and endless nights—do it.
A few years back, I bought my first desktop UV lamp. I’ve brought it to school the last few winters. However, it was this past winter in particular when I found myself turning it on and sitting in front of it for half an hour at a time. I could really notice the difference. There’s something about Vitamin D—it resets your mood back to normal levels. It’s not like a drug where you get high or anything, but you just start to feel a little bit more human again.
I shared it with Sparky, the teacher who shares a room with me. She gave it a try and liked it so much that she ended up ordering one for herself on Amazon. Then, that year for Christmas, she decided it was going to be her go-to gift for all her relatives. If I remember correctly, she bought about five or six of them.
I’ve even had students approach me and ask if they can sit near it for a little while during class, a request I happily oblige. It’s just a small thing, but moments like that remind me that we’re all human, and quite frankly, we’re all slogging through the same crappy Michigan winter together.
I guess my best advice for handling the coming winter would be to make sure you get some Vitamin D and light—even if it’s from underneath a UV lamp.
If you have the means, I’d also recommend traveling. Try to get out of town at some point to somewhere warmer, even if it’s just for a few days. Of course, the downside is that coming back to Michigan afterward is almost worse. I can think of half a dozen times where “it” hit me on the drive back. It’s not like the sky in Ohio is suddenly sunny and bright, but the real reality check is the physical pavement. The second you cross the state line, the roads in Michigan absolutely suck. The endless freeze-thaw cycles trap water under the concrete, turning the highways into a minefield of potholes—a problem made worse by decades of awarding construction jobs to the lowest bidder who guarantees job security through eternal repairs. Nothing says “welcome back to winter” quite like the sudden thud of Michigan asphalt.
My final piece of advice for surviving the season: find something about it that you love. Shoveling snow, building a snowman, outdoor winter markets, sledding—whatever tickles your fancy. Find it and lean into it. After all, winter only comes once a year.
Thankfully…
Rebuilding a life takes grit, consistency, and a lot of ‘Option C’ thinking. Having crossed the 1,000-day milestone, I’m now charting the territory beyond. The mission remains the same: No glitz. Just the work. New to the blog? Start your journey here to see the blueprint and the ‘Tricorder’ perspective behind the rebuild.
Today’s post is inspired by the WordPress Daily Prompt. While I’ve taken the topic in my own direction for the Road beyond 1,000 Days, you can find more responses to today’s prompt HERE.
Thanks for stopping by Rebuilding Rob. Be sure to like 👍, comment and subscribe below. It’s greatly appreciated! Also, feel free to follow me on social media and check out my recent posts!
- Winter is Coming
- The Art of the Game Face (and Taking It Off)
- The Sony Betamax of Gaming: Why My First Console Was Better Than Yours
- Learning to live again
- I Gots to Know
AI art created by Google Gemini
The article “winter is coming “first appeared on Rebuilding Rob.
Leave a Reply