Sunshine and Sanity

My coworkers are insane. I came in this morning to find that three of them had not left the office since early Sunday. Not only had they spent the majority of the last two weeks in the office, including weekends, they had now gone more than 24 hours without leaving the building, not even stopping to sleep.

I'm sorry, this is crazy-people behavior. There is a thin line between dedication-to-a-project and outright mental illness. They have crossed that line. Sure, today was the deadline to get their book out, and if it wasn't out today we’d lose thousands and thousands of dollars, but was it really worth it? Probably. It just makes me uncomfortable that this might happen to me. Becoming a work-zombie isn't on my list of fun things to do.

The boss assures us that this kind of thing won't come up again. We're better spacing out our projects, she says. Let us hope she's right. I'm all for taking one for the team, don't get me wrong. I've put in my fair share of late nights, coming in weekends, etc. In fact, I came in on Saturday and spent a few hours writing photo captions for this project. It was a sunny weekend, too, and instead of basking in the warmth, I was huddled over my computer describing civil war photographs.

Sunshine is my prozac. It severely affects my mood, no lie. I could be cursing the human race and kicking small children, angry as the day I was born, and then step out into a bright sunny day and suddenly I’m skipping along grassy paths, distributing lollipops and french-kissing nuns.

It's scientifically proven that weather affects mood, so I know I’m not alone here, but I think my case may be a little extreme. A sunny day can turn everything around for me, as if I was some kind of chlorophyll starved chia pet. Which brings up a good point: if I believed in reincarnation, I would swear I was a plant in another life. It all fits together too perfectly--my longing for sunlight, the fact I like water...um...and that's pretty much it.

Let's drop the plant metaphor. In fact, let's just go ahead and end this post entirely. The moral of the story is that you shouldn't work yourself to death and also that winter sucks monkey groin. The end.