Rainy Days
What is it about rainy days that absolutely sap any form of motivation and creativity from your soul?
I’m sitting here at my desk, not working on my actual to-do list I get paid for, feeling completely de-motivated. My to-do list isn’t even difficult or time consuming – I just plain don’t want to work on it. I mean there are only two items on the list and one of them is basically “make a work plan for my upcoming vacation”. Not hard at all.
At the same time that I feel de-motivated, I feel a drive to be creative, which is why I’m writing this post right now. It’s a weird feeling, because I also don’t feel like putting the work into crafting a good piece of writing. So here I am, procrastinating and trying to figure out something with which to occupy my time. Which leads me to my opening question.
Rain sucks.
The first thing I thought about was SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder), but I’m pretty sure that is specific time period when there is a distinct lack of sun over the course of several months, usually during winter. It’s been really nice and sunny for a long time now, and this is the first day of rain we’ve had in a couple of weeks.
Usually rain is a welcome thing for me, especially this time of year. It signals the end of super hot weather, and the beginning of the awesome time of year, Fall, where I can comfortably wear long pants and comfy hoodies. In fact, that’s something I need to correct right this instant; I’m wearing a collared polo shirt instead of a t-shirt and comfy sweater. This must change now.
Properly armed with my hoodie, I can now do some research to figure out what exactly the deal is with rain. This specific website suggests that there are a variety of factors that contribute to the sleepy laziness rain induces. They talk about something called “pink noise” which is like white noise, but there’s something about the sound distribution that specifically induces a feeling of tiredness. I’m not going to pretend to explain it, read the website.
Lack of ultraviolet light (aka “The Sun”) contributes to an overall “blah” feeling (their words), but interestingly “dim light” serves to increase the production of melatonin, which is the stuff that makes you sleepy. There are other contributing factors that I skimmed over, but I have to say that is a pretty definitive answer for me.
But look, I still wrote!
Yeah, rain sucks, and I feel pretty tired and not entirely motivated to work right now. But I still managed to write something and learn something new! And while I listen to the baseball game, perhaps I will endeavour to finish my to-do list for work; if nothing else it will prevent me from snacking out of pure boredom (which is one of the biggest issues I have with working from home, but that’s another matter).
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