Let’s face it, not everyone waits with bated breath for the first ski hill to open or looks longingly at their ski-doo in August. For many of us, the first few white flakes falling from the sky turns smiles into frowns that will probably last until Spring.
Clinically there are things you can do to cheer yourself up. I have a full spectrum light over my desk that does wonders for S.A.D. but you need to do more over the Winter than just for your physical well being. There are many hours to fill after you have shutdown the office for the day or between shovelling the driveway. Here are a few quick ideas to get you going:
10 Things To Do If You Are NOT A Winter Person
- Find a nearby rec centre. Winter recreation programs are usually wide-ranging, everything from origami to water polo.
- Take that course you never seemed to have time for, like watercolour painting, photography etc. Check the local school board or college for night school programs. Or get reacquainted with a programming language like Python.
- Learn a new language. There are apps like Duolingo and Memrise that you can carry about with you instead of sitting at a desk.
- Explore a new social activity. Maybe that Spanish you are taking on Duolingo could lead to a flamenco class.
- How about that large pile of books you have never tackled? I hear they go well with a cuppa tea and a snuggly quilt.
- Organize an event. When I lived in Northern Canada, February was ‘Heart Month‘ where we would organize a snow-pitch tournament, complete with broomballs instead of softballs and snowpacked base paths. And of course there was always a Karaoke party afterwards. Win-win.
- Teach a skill. You don’t need to plan a lot, thanks to the Internet, maybe post a link to Jitsi or Zoom for Friday night to host a knit-a-long or show off proper joinery techniques. You never know, it would be fun and might even turn into a side-hustle.
- Like teaching a skill, offer to tutor, I see a lot of requests online for high school math and english tutors. You get to show younguns the proper past participle or joy of calculus (even better it would help greybeards like me learn to relate to GenZ’s).
- Volunteer! A couple nights a week at a soup kitchen or food bank would always be welcome. When my Dad retired his greatest joy was working a couple days a week at the local soup kitchen!
- Stay off social media. Winter is long and bad enough without all the negative, doomscrolling crap on social media.
How about you? What do you do to ‘endure’ the long Winter season?
Cheers,
Mark
(full disclosure – I am from Vancouver Island which never really has Winter so even after all these years snow is not my friend.)