Vigilante
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Like I said earlier, I live a very happy life. It's only fall and winter that make me feel much worse but even then, it's not like I use it as an excuse for being unhappy. Even then I try to be as happy as I can.
I fully agree with you that sun isn't the only factor to happiness, though I still believe it can play a big role, especially when it affects your health.
@Vigilante - do you still travel back to colder climates for business/personal matters from time to time?
Deal haha.
True, though if I were to think about my happiest memories they wouldn't be the memories of me sitting alone on a beach in Mexico; they would be the memories of spending time with my girlfriend and friends (regardless of the weather).
In the end after talking with my girlfriend and thinking about it myself I decided to fill my calendar for the winter with frequent trips to warm countries (going to book a December trip with some friends to the south of Spain today). While traveling, I'll be investigating possible places to move to in the future. If frequent travels won't solve the problem, I'll know where to go (though I pretty much narrowed down the choice to the south of Spain, the Canary Islands and the south of Portugal).
Thank you for your perspective, @Andy Black. As weird as it sounds, your post is very soothing.
I am begrudgingly going back to the midwest this year for Christmas, and my son's college graduation. Love seeing the family, but they come to Florida regularly. I don't have a winter coat or any winter clothes any more, so I am not sure what I am going to do this Christmas. I told my wife I was going to have a town car pick me up, deliver me where ever I was going, and when it was time to leave they could come pick me up again and bring me to the airport.
The older I got, the more I dreaded Fall because Fall lead to winter, and I literally came to despise winter. Quite frankly, I don't understand people who like it, and I can only assume that a lack of knowing any differently is what leads to their complacence. I had seasonal disfunction disorder. I dreaded winter, dreaded winter approaching, and spent five months a year in a shitty mood like everyone else did.
Look at the cold weather states. Six months out of the year, the people are all assholes. Why? The air hurts your face. You trudge through slush in your dress shoes to your car, noticing that your pants, shoes and socks are now wet and will be like that for the better part of the day. You scrape the ICE off your windshield, and start your car while your body is trying to adjust from the 70+ indoor temps to the now below freezing weather that literally could freeze your blood if you let it. The car starts to warm up, but traffic sucks because it is snowing, and the snow plows haven't come through yet. Your 20 minute commute takes an hour, which is OK because everyone else is late also. You walk in the door to the office, and all anyone wants to talk about is the shitty weather. Vendors like me might fly in for a meeting, marvel at the fact that you live in a freezer, and fly back to the tropics. You look at the calendar but your one week vacation to the beach is still seven weeks away. You dread the drive home, the walk through the slush, the scraping the windshield, the warming up the car, the commute home through the snow, and the driveway that is waiting there for you to shovel it after the long, stressful, winter induced hateful day you had. And the next morning? You can get up and do it all again.
Coats. Winter hats. Mittens. Frozen snot. Frozen cars. Shoveling. Bad drivers. No sunshine. Cold to the bone. Dead battery. Need new windshield wipers. New tires. New attitude. You choose that. All of that.
Guess what? NOBODY needs to live like that. It is a choice.