AG Jalapenos - Office Harvest (12/20/2017) ** Term 11/26/18

Is your Office Jalapeno still doing good?  How are your other gardens?  Most importantly, are you feeling any better?

I think it is fantastic that your fellow workmates are eyeing your project! I do hope you are doing better and please take care of yourself!

And the thing about doing better:  I actually do have seasonal affective disorder, but not the kind that hits in the winter.  It's the summer time when I get depressed (this is an actual thing).  This is my first bout of winter depression, ever.

My PhD in clinical psychology gives me the tools to know when I've gone over the edge (since it always happens so gradually, it's hard to detect), and my years of being a software engineer have led me to diagnose what's going on in my head, and to ask the question: what changed?  I mean why now and not any of the other 61 winters?  Balancing this are:

1) My circadian rhythms are farther out of whack than ever before.  I am, by nature, a night person, and my difficulties staying awake during the day are, at best, so bad that I just don't like to drive when the sun is out.  But now, it's even worse.  You know how when we go onto daylight saving time, everyone feels like they're getting up an hour early (mainly because they are)?  This year, my natural waking time sifted from 4:00AM (so I can drive to work in the dark) to 3:00 AM, when by all rights, if I were like everyone else, I'd be naturally waking up at 5:00.  This is just strange.

2) Loss of appetite.  This is like an alcoholic losing interest in beer.

3) Pseudo dimentia: my brain has been a fog, I'm making stupid mistakes at work, and, for lack of better term, I'm "losing my words."

4) The most extreme lack of motivation I can remember having in a very long time.  For the last two months, I've had a new shower curtain liner still in the package it came in, sitting on my bathroom floor, to replace the years old one that's getting moldy.  Even though this is a health issue, and probably contributing to my physical illness, it was only yesterday that I actually felt motivated to do the replacement.

That's enough for a clinical diagnosis of depression.  I have a deal with my psychiatrist that if I start feeling depressed, to up my dosage.  It's just starting to work.

Unfortunately, I've been having some physical symptoms that are rather dangerous indicators that I should back down on my dosage, and I'm kind of feeling between a rock and a hard place.

So, I ask myself, why now?

The normal treatment for regular winter seasonal affective disorder is a light box that you put in front of your eyes for a couple hours a day to retrain your supraoptic chiasm, which retrains your circadian rhythms.  Well, hell, for the last almost-a-year, I've had about 700 watts of LED lighting in my bedroom, most of which are grow lights.  During standard time, they come on at 4:00 AM (5:00 after the daylight saving change) and turn off at 8:00 PM standard time (9:00 PM DST).  This I did not have for the previous 61 winters.

I do NOT like where this is heading.  I am having an especially hard time staying awake during daylight hours, and given my backwards seasonal affective disorder and my upside down natural circadian rhythm, I think I may be inducing the depression with all the grow lighting.

Which just sucks.

Have they ever checked your thyroid or other metabolic levels as well as things like vitamin D, etc? What you're experiencing is very much like when my thyroid keeled over in 1998. I also take other prescribed supplements and vitamins, but the thyroid issue was huge. In addition, my vitamin D was so low (at 5) a couple years ago my heart could have failed. I don't know if adrenal fatigue is really a thing as it's hotly debated, but I take an OTC supplement in addition to my prescribed 120mg Armour Thyroid (desiccated thyroid), and I feel great. I still have very dry skin and a few other minor issues, but the big ones are under control.

I took Nuvigil and Provigil for years before I found my savior ANP that actually listened, tested and treated me.

may be crazy, but could work.

Greeted this morning with my first (mostly) red pepper on this plant.  At last count, I think there are 18 total.

A bit of corking,  but it just gives them more character.

Get a Jalapeno red like that, and it's sweeter and hotter.

Huzzah!!