Growing up in Portland, one of the things I prided myself on was the fact that I was never one of those people who was plagued by Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). I didn’t mind the long, overcast days and the weeks without sun. I was tough, I was a Pacific Northwesterner.

Then I moved to Philadelphia and began to lose my resilient ways. First, I stopped seeing sandals as appropriate year-round footwear. Then I started using an umbrella (people in the Northwest don’t use umbrellas, they either don a hood or just dodge the raindrops). Finally, I began to long for the sun.

While I still don’t think I’m someone who gets excessively blue because of the lack of sunlight, I’m finding myself desperate for natural light these days. I hate to leave my apartment to go to work, in large part because it means that I’m bidding farewell to the light that comes in our nearly wall-to-wall living room windows. There’s still some light left in the sky when I leave work in the evenings these days and when I walk out into it each evening, I feel a wave of gratitude sweep over me for the absence of darkness.

Part of the problem is that I work in the far corner of the office. I’m tucked back here with some truly lovely people, but their charm doesn’t make up for the fact that we are nowhere near a window.

I know that lots of people find relief for this sort of thing from light boxes. However, I don’t think that’s the solution for me. I don’t think I need the particular UV rays. I need the space and air that comes from having access to light. Unfortunately, there’s no solution for this problem at the moment. For the time being, I will just be grateful for the approach of spring.