November can be a tough month.
The end of daylight savings time means many folks leave for and come home from work in the dark. For me and many of my friends and family, that certainly doesn’t help our mental health.
The first real cold days of the year usually come in November. Some people (like myself) don’t mind Canada’s cold winters because it means we can take solace in snow-based winter sports. However, in boring old November, there’s usually not yet enough snow for said sports. Just some of the cold and none of the fun.
Now don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love Christmas. It’s my favourite holiday. But when I walked into a certain large chain department store on Oct. 31 in a last-ditch effort to get some candy for trick-or-treaters, only to find Christmas displays out in full force, I thought to myself that this was getting ridiculous.
It wasn’t even November yet and the corporate powers that be were already trying to sell me Christmas. Just think of the poor retail workers who have to listen to Christmas music for almost two months. There’s something that doesn’t feel right about hearing Jingle Bells in the middle of November. I can’t imagine what it would be like to be someone who doesn’t like Christmas, or doesn’t celebrate it. In my eyes, the early onset of Christmas is another strike against November.
Besides the more serious problem of the effect darkness can have on one’s mental health, I do acknowledge that my gripes with November are indeed first-world problems. Still, that didn’t stop me from saying this to my colleague the other day: “November is a month with no redeeming qualities.”
The very next day, I happened to find a brand-new spot to practise my favourite sport, downhill longboarding. It was an incredibly steep area with an awesome sharp corner and, best of all, not a motor vehicle to be found.
In the sport of downhill longboarding, the sentence “incredibly steep area with an awesome sharp corner and no motor vehicles” may as well translate to “heaven on earth.” The next day, I was able to leave work early and I took my board out for a ride there. I had the best time.
So if you’re having a tough time this month, try your best to keep your head up and stay positive. You never know what good things could be around the (steep, sharp) corner.
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Do you have something else we should report on? Email: zachary.roman@saobserver.net
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