Weather Doldrums

One of my most faithful readers reminded me today that it's been some time since I posted here.  A quick peek at the date of my last post confirmed that I haven't been active here for a few weeks. Many apologies to those of you who keep checking faithfully; hopefully I've got my writing "oomph" back and there won't be such a long gap again.

Part of the reason my "get up and go" seemed to have "got up and went" away is the weather here on my country mile.  We had a very long and cold winter, followed by a late, slow, cold, and wet spring.  You would think that after all that, we deserve to enjoy the most beautiful summer ever but, apart from a very few days scattered here and there, the summer so far has been record-breaking wet, windy, cool, and cloudy.  This has resulted in an overwhelming crop of mosquitoes ensuring that, should it actually not be pouring rain, you don't dare stick your nose outside anyway!

When the weather is gloomy and disappointing, so is my mood and so are all my creative impulses.  Right now I'm sitting in my writing room (a.k.a. the guest room or my study) with a quilted jacket over my long sleeve top and the electric blanket on my lap and wrapped around my legs.  That's my usual situation for writing in the wintertime; it's very depressing to need all this on the last day of June.  Outside it's cold, windy and rainy.  We've had about 70 millimeters in the last few days and the forecast for tomorrow is ... you guessed it, cloudy, windy, cool, and rain!

Of course, rain is pretty and can make my country mile look amazingly beautiful.  But my garden and yard are overrun with weeds because it's been raining on my days off for over a month now and I just can't do the yard work I need to.  Hence, the excess of rain we've had is not pretty and has made my yard look neglected and overgrown.

I don't usually mind feeling this occasionally,

as long as I can also get regular doses of this.

I've noticed that as I get older, my mental health is more and more linked to the state of the weather.  It makes good sense; we're natural creatures and are attuned to our environment.  As such, we need balance and harmony to be at our best.  This spring and summer there seems to be something distinctly unbalanced and unharmonious about our weather, not just here on my country mile, but across the whole province.  People from all over are feeling it, as I hear frequently in my work.
 
But some good has come out of these five consecutive days of nasty, stormy weather; I've done so much reading (the latest Diana Gabaldon novel) and so much reading about writing (the latest issues of my writing magazines) that I'm pumped to write.  First, this post and next, another chapter of my novel.

And more good news: the forecast is calling for sunshine on Wednesday ... just in time for me to go back to work!