I'm trying to write a paper on Nietzsche and it's really not going to so well. I also just finished my book and it was good (as I knew it would be) but slightly bittersweet. I hate it when the new book in a series comes out but it doesn't resolve much, or it resolves just enough to make you want to read the next one. I get it, but it's still annoying.

On another note, the time changed happened today and I am finally able to pinpoint what causes my seasonal depression. I know that people theorize the lack of vitamin (k? b?) from the sun causes it, and some have suggested that being in Vegas might ease my winter blues, but I feel the beginnings stirring in my psyche and I know that this winter, like all winters, will be a battle of me being depressed, knowing it, trying to avoid it, and failing miserably. It is the sun setting so early in the day. For some reason the sun rising later in the morning doesn't throw me--perhaps because I am no a morning person, but when it twilight hits at 4:45 and dark sets in around 5:45 I find a sense of sadness pervading that wasn't there Saturday when it set an hour later. I like night, I am a night person, and so it doesn't make sense that the sun setting earlier would affect me so strongly. And yet, it does.

Perhaps it is the feeling of another day gone coming too soon. Perhaps it is a combination of Sunday blues and early sunsets. Perhaps it is just my body's natural knowledge of another winter. Probably it is a combination of all, including my natural hesitancy of being in Vegas. I never stumbled when people asked me how I liked Boston. It was an easy question with easy conversation. I have yet to provide a satisfactory answer to Vegas. I don't hate it. But I don't love it. Maybe it is because I'm getting older and traveling around is more a hassle than an adventure; maybe it's because my friends are having children and I wish I were there to see it. Maybe it's because desert isn't my natural environment. Whatever the reason I am happy here when I am with people, but rarely content on my own. And yet, after being with people for more than a few hours I begin to crave solitude. There's a contradiction for you.

Who knows what the point of all these musings are. Probably they stem from my discovery the other night that Orion is on the other side of the sky from where I am used to seeing him. Such a small thing really. But when you look up and even the stars are different...then you know you truly are in a different land. There's something unsettling about that. Five years ago it just would have been exciting. Oh well, it's always okay in the end. If it's not okay, then it just isn't the end yet.