My own personal seven dwarves

Despite my new lightbox, I started my day feeling somewhat grouchy and grumpy and realized I was once again in the company of my dwarves. I have a lot more than seven. Grouchy and Grumpy are just part of the crowd. There's also Foggy, Groggy, Bleary, Logey, Weepy, Sneaky, Snippy, and Morose. And don't forget Snotty and Catty. They are always lurking in the dark corners of the Hellish Handbasket.

Carol's Brain

I was hoping the new lightbox would be a magic bullet to ward off my SAD, which is beginning to fill the crannies of my mind with fog. It's a feeling I associate with winter and spring. A brain filled with cotton. Because I am virtually non-functional, it makes sense to have my dwarves step in for me. My avatars, if you will.

There is a guy at work, I'll call him Frankie. After I started hallucinating a kitchen full of cranky dwarves—hey, that's another one, Cranky—I thought, I wonder if other people have dwarves that reflect their personalities too. Like Frankie, for instance. What would his dwarves be named? Probably Happy, Sunny, Chummy, Chipper. Don't forget Helpful and Skippy. Smiley and Beamer. For some reason it's harder to think of optimistic names. I don't know if you can tell, but I sometimes have disparaging thoughts toward Frankie. I say I am confounded by his eternal optimism. He says he appreciates my point of view, because he doesn't "think that way." He's too ebullient to judge me the way I judge him. He's like a freshly opened can of 7-Up. Me, I'm like a two-day old cup of cold bitter coffee.

The idea of having my own set of pessimistic, cynical, angry dwarves is utterly stupid. But it points out to me how ridiculous my self-obsession can get, especially on a gloomy, rainy winter morning.