November – The Most Depressing Month of The Year

A few reasons why November is the most depressing month of the year:

  • It is getting colder, not as much fun being outdoors. Bleugh.
  • The green of the trees has left.  The leaves have fallen.  All that’s left are bare sticks. Bleugh.
  • Grass and ground plants are turning brown.  Bleugh.
  • There is no white snow yet to brighten up the landscape. Bleugh.
  • Days are getting shorter, so there is less light. Bleugh.
  • Cloud cover makes the shorter days and the browner barren landscape, making it all even bleughier.

We are in the final stages of setting up a solar power generation system on our land (You can read about it at http://www.solarontarioblog.ca)  Until we saw the month solar radiation stats, we did not realize just how cloudy November is.

See this graph:

Consider that December 21 is the Winter Solstice – the shortest day of the year.  That means that December should have the least hours of sunshine, weather excluded.  Because the 21st is closer to January than to November, January should have the second-fewest hours of sunlight, and November should have the third-fewest hours of sunlight.

November is the perfect time to do purposeful things to add some uplift to your days.  In our household, that has meant some games of air hockey, trips to the library and board games – family things we can do together that encourage laughter and smiles.

How do you plan to blow away the clouds of November?

Note: I have cross-posted this (sort of) over at November – Solar Power’s Doldrums.

Is your marriage heating up or cooling off?

What I remember most vividly from our marriage preparation course (yeah, that’s a long time ago by now) is learning that in most parts of the world and most times in history marriages were arranged.  You did not marry for love, you loved for marriage.  We are used to hearing horror stories about arranged marriages and how people are forced to marry someone they do not even love.  But we rarely hear about how successful most arranged marriages are.  I guess that is not newsworthy.

Recently I read a statement to the effect that in modern society we jump in with a red hot passion, and after the wedding day we slowly let it cool down, whereas in more “traditional” cultures, a marriage starts out cool and the couple spends their life making it grow hotter each day.

Of course not all arranged marriages end up growing hotter, just as not all “true love” marriages last a lifetime.

What are you doing in your marriage?  Are you making it hotter or cooling it off?  A marriage doesn’t have to be arranged to grow hotter – it simply has to have a spark and two people feeding the fire.  So keep feeding it.