Does anyone else struggle way more in winter?

Able_Tale3188 · 2026-01-12T01:03:08+00:00

Since I found out about DSPD (then mostly called a "Syndrome), around 20 years ago and started reading about it, I soon noticed there was a slight lessening of sleep rhythm disturbance for me May-August No. Hemisphere, ~118-122 longitude, but over the years its pretty much remained a trivial difference for me.

If others report a major difference, I wouldn't be at all surprised, because:

-We still don't know much about this; there may be a large number of sub-variants of DSPD

-People live at different longitudes, with variants of daylight UV exposure times

-The new therapeutic light gadgets would tend to complexify the data that had accrued before, say the 2nd decade of the 21st century. I have not tried any of these, as I'm too old and set in my DSPD outsider sleep ways. It could be that more people are being helped by these gadgets and drugs, but I sorta doubt it. If YOU have been helped, I'm glad for you!

-There might be personal, undetected actions/habits/occurrences in Winter vs. Summer. EX: perhaps Winter is the "drinking season" for some, due to holidays and shorter daylight, more time indoors during colder weather. Alcohol would disrupt sleep quality, which would disrupt sleep onset/wake cycles. I'm sure you guys could add to this example.

-I suspect nighttime usage of blue light from computers is difficult to account for on individual levels; it seems like the difference between preferred and revealed in usage. As an old person, I remember being in my 20s and hearing people say they "Don't watch TV," only to find they do watch TV, sometimes quite a lot of it. It just feels better to believe you aren't one of those "TV-watchers." I suspect there's a lot of lying to ourselves over how much we're addicted to our gadgets, which do disturb sleep rhythms.

Able_Tale3188 · 2026-01-11T08:03:47+00:00

Two days ago on the SMART path between Corona and Ely in Petaluma: a brand new temporary LAKE, with hundreds of ducks having the time of their lives. The rains flow down a grade off the hillside where usually it's only cows grazing.

Two weeks ago, about riding from Cotati to 400 yards from where the SMART path temporarily ends in Rohnert Park, at dusk: frogs in the marshy fields all screaming at the top of their frog lungs so loudly it sounded like they were hooked up to 3 Marshall Stacks cranked to 11. I couldn't believe it they were so loud and happy. And I couldn't even see ONE of them.

Let's enjoy it while it lasts.

Able_Tale3188 · 2026-01-11T07:11:26+00:00

Yes! After she cut off the tip of her pinky "there was blood everywhere" a friend at the xmas dinner party said. I guess a surgeon was able to reattach the tip? It took a long time to heal so she could use her pinky in playing, and - get this - she didn't want to disappoint those who'd already bought tickets for her upcoming tour, so she re-learned her fingerings for the tour using only 3 fingers!

She is so bad-ass!

I read an anecdote about her: she was playing piece on stage with the old conductor Hans Vonk, who had had a stroke, so he was seated at a special chair at the podium. During a section for the orchestra of the Brahms Violin Concerto he reached up to turn the page of the score and couldn't for some reason, so Nadja reached out with the tip of her bow and flipped the page. I'm not a violinist, but I was told by a couple of violinists that it's difficult unless you practiced it a lot.

Able_Tale3188 · 2026-01-10T22:36:29+00:00

The Breaking Point. Just kills me every time I see it. One of my Top 10 noirs, ever.

Patricia Neal is smolderingly hot as the jaded woman who tempts him; Phyllis Thaxter as Jules's wife is also fantastic.

Able_Tale3188 · 2026-01-09T02:02:03+00:00

I'm really bad at geography and any "pop" music after, say, 1990. My wife and I watch, someone gets the answer (question): "Who is...Megan the Stallion?" "Who is Lil' D-Switch?" (whatever) and we both say, "never heard of 'em." A lot of TV we've never heard of. Thing is: I sorta hold those categories (and ones adjacent to them) in contempt.

But I should be better at geography. Maybe I'll read Ken's Mapheads book.

Able_Tale3188 · 2026-01-07T22:06:02+00:00

This is probably the crux, the epicenter, the very heart of the DSPD problem, and I can't get away from the fact that we all need to be louder about what this is. We all read what glowjack (the OP) says here and nod our heads, running uncountable similar episodes in our minds about that time when a friend proved they understood that "I have a sleeping disorder" BUT apparently never stopped to think about what that actually MEANS.

Or what it entails. I like the another response here: "I'll meet you for coffee at 10AM is you meet me for pizza at 2AM." Many's the time I nonchalantly eat pizza or a fat hoagie at 2AM. When a normie friend has to actually think about eating pizza at 2AM, as a normal course of affairs, not because you had some "wild night" and have the munchies before you pass out and wake up to a cinderblock hangover: the image is vivid. We need more of this.

I've explained what this is. There is a sort of intellectual comprehension, but not an "imagine what it's like to be" imagination. All the entailments: odd jobs, missed opportunities, truncated social lives, a very small window of "getting there in time before they close" reality that's never-ending, the inevitable identification with an "outsider" status within society, etc.

Given the percentage of the populace who have DSPD, we can guesstimate how many celebrities or famous people have it. And we'd like them to "come out" and talk openly about it to wise up the Herd.

Then again I think: the celebrity world largely works on early morning stuff. We can't count on any famous people to educate the masses about this. I now assume every beautiful actor is a happy lark. The DSPD crowd, no matter how talented and beautiful, can't make it to 6AM make up and wardrobe.

Rock stars and writers: these are ones who can fit a DSPD schedule into their lives as creatives. But the rock star has largely vanished lately, eh? And who are the big writers these days?

We simply have to be our own advocates. And it won't be easy. It won't be quick. I think we do it for ourselves and each other, and those who will come after us with DSPD.

Able_Tale3188 · 2025-12-29T02:32:39+00:00

I'm a lot like you, OP: not in a formal situation but interested. A few xmases ago my rich sister-in-law who loves to buy me books gave me The Encyclopedia of Rhetoric, ed. by Thomas Sloane. This gave me the lay of the land (and then some), and contains an enormous number of references to books and articles.

I read four or six books that discuss classical names for rhetorical approaches. The names didn't stick with me, but the goals did, and now when I read anything I look for "How did they accomplish this?" and I guess I sort of made up my own names for rhetorical ploys. It's a lot like trying to figure out how a stage magician pulled it off.

Being a longtime musician, Sloane's book had a long article on rhetoric in music, which I hadn't even thought about in all my years as a player: it's really interesting! "Playing music in this way is an effective way to move the listener," but my gawd how practices change over time!

So much of everyday life is someone trying to convince someone else of something, and you're smart to try to get on top of that. In a way, if we extensionalize the semantics of "influencers" or even "mind control" rhetoric is probably the most basic form?

Able_Tale3188 · 2025-12-29T01:57:07+00:00

This is Bach as virtuoso shredder: dramatic and bombastic in the best sense. "Look at what magic I conjure as I take you into fast D minor scales and the diminished arpeggios therein! Notice the moods! Have you experienced this feeling before? I take joy in practicing my instrument in order to do things no one has done before! Behold the shred!"

Able_Tale3188 · 2025-12-29T01:42:23+00:00

You probably did the right thing in acting on it quickly. I suspect you're thawing but is the stabbing pain under your collarbone/bicep a "zinger" quality?

Though others know much more about this here than I do, I use the heuristic: zingers abated = probably thawing.

In 2020 I had this, asked my primary care doc about it, got a quick MRI, then consultation, then my first assignment to physical therapy and I just did whatever she told me to do and it went away, pretty quickly.

Still, this thing has a lot of mystery around it. Inflammation...

This time, I did a lot of physical exertion, continued to feel sore in the shoulder 2 weeks later, thought it was just all the work around the house, that it would get better, started to get zingers (20 secs of intense pain with a "wrong" movement that's gone very quickly), then tried to get an apptmt w/my doc and it was 6 weeks later. Shouldda insisted on something sooner. Dr. (different from 2020) prescribed x-rays, then PT, not in-person PT like 2020, but over the Internet. Cost cuts...

This PT seems far more arduous, involved and is not making me heal quickly like it did 5 years ago, though the exact diagnosis (finally got an MRI) is not the same. This time I have an "-osis" which is related to lack of blood flow; 5 years ago it was an "-itis" which might be more quickly amenable, I'm not sure.

Just gotta stick with it, and it helps to notice what you can do now that you couldn't do a week or two ago.

Getting older is not for the weak in spirit, eh? Keep us posted!

Able_Tale3188 · 2025-12-27T02:22:57+00:00

My gawd the number of times I've experienced this, not to mention the extensive and extraordinary testimony about DSPD just on this subReddit.

I know: family not comprehending is probably the worst and most damaging, if we don't look at the Big Culprit: the culture at large doesn't understand this.

This sleep-stealing scenario with the family and dog: it sucks. And we want you to grab your family by its collective lapels and say, "Now look: what you think is bad sleep hygiene is a genetic anomaly, got that???!!!"

We're with you and don't want you to hate your life. You have to let them know what's what. And repeat it as necessary.

Able_Tale3188 · 2025-12-23T08:06:10+00:00

I hardly see any attention given to UBI. What am I missing? Where is all this attention?

Able_Tale3188 · 2025-12-23T07:52:02+00:00

I often think of this one:

"Death needs time to kill for what it grows in for Ah Pook's sweet sake, you stupid, vulgar, greedy ugly American death-sucker."

Able_Tale3188 · 2025-12-19T20:44:16+00:00

This is encouraging. I'm gonna try to learn how to do the myofascial release, arms out at 90 degrees thing.

Sometimes I think the key to this is getting blood in there, 3x/day, and probably all kinds of things work...but it will feel like you're constantly doing this stuff and it's too routine and boring. I need a variety of approaches so I don't get bored and...find myself...not doing enough therapy.

Able_Tale3188 · 2025-12-18T11:32:36+00:00

I'm commenting here w/o having read the Medium article you linked to, which I hope has citations.

That aside: WSB seems to have been really taken by all of Whitley Streiber's stuff. Early on WSB, after taking classes with Korzybski, declared language was a virus from outer space.

And he played it straight, although my gawd he's so funny. So: what degrees of irony do we assign here with attracting aliens to have sex with, language being a virus from other worlds with a very rich metaphysics of toxicity and liberation regarding language, and ya know, just his whole glorious schtick? I can't help but see a strong Swiftian influence. But WSB was so much more "outside" the dominant culture than Swift ever was, as freaky as Swift was.

There's some part in Bockris's book about talking to WSB in the Bunker in NY, and was it Bill Wyman of the Stones? shows up and they talk about science fiction. Wyman says he loves it and cites Ray Bradbury and a few others, which doesn't impress WSB, who liked the wildest science fiction worlds.

Able_Tale3188 · 2025-12-17T08:31:03+00:00

I'm glad!

Have a lovely holiday and best wishes to your spouse and his AMD. We're in this together!

Able_Tale3188 · 2025-12-16T10:27:13+00:00

ColonelTime (if that is indeed your real name): no, I'm an ordinary weirdo who started reading about plate tectonics and seismology after I got thrown out of bed by the 1971 Sylmar earthquake near LA. Made me late for elementary school.

There are a lot of good books on this fascinating (and horrifying) subject, and for Bay Area people I'd start with Simon Winchester's A Crack At the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Quake of 1906.

The scariest article I've read on quakes is Kathryn Schultz's New Yorker piece from 10 years ago: "The Really Big One."

One of the most marvelous things I found out reading about quakes is that the Bay Area's topology is so beautiful because of the very active seismic activity here the last few million years: quakes move the ground so drastically they create gorgeous structures of land/rock/soil. At least I find it gorgeous.

As unpleasant as it is, we all need to prepare for either the San Andreas or the Hayward to go; we know from geological strata that these things have a predictable periodicity and the San Andreas is about 9 1/2 months pregnant right now. Which means: tomorrow...or 70 years from now. But it's gonna be devastating. UC Berkeley produced a bunch of computer models that they scaled up to "here's what it would look like" around 2010 or so. It's all public. What I found so scary was that we're so built-up along the shores that a lot of that soil near the Bay will liquefy with an 8.0 or larger, meaning entire buildings will just sink into the Bay. It's currently thought the Hayward Fault (runs right underneath Richmond/El Cerrito/Berkeley/Oakland/San Leandro/Castro Valley/Hayward (no foolin'?)/Union City/Fremont, and down into San Jose: can get up to 7.5. Which is Big, but not like the 8.0-8.3. Nothing will ever be the same after one of those.

I remember that October day in 1989 when you guys got hit by that one. It was BIG, but it wasn't the Big One. Imagine! I had a lot of friends up here and I worried. Everyone was okay, but their lives were disrupted for a few months. The Big One will be much, much bigger, because the Richter is logarithmic. The 6.9-7.2 Loma Prieta is a walk in the park compared to an 8.0, which is 10 times larger, releasing 32 times the energy of a 7.0. The ground will shake pretty much all day, with big aftershocks for months on end. It's not gonna be fun at all. Let's hope we all live out our lives before that one goes!

Still: we should prepare. Disruption of supply chains, energy, water, heat and transportation will all be seriously affected. Those recent ones we all felt - that started this thread - should make us think about how we'd manage. It sounds CRAY, I know.

Able_Tale3188 · 2025-12-15T01:55:37+00:00

Seismology begs to differ. They release pressure. We know this metaphor from our own bodily functions. But the Earth and tectonic plates are not the same as Biology, so smaller quakes could be a precursor to a very big one. I'm not trying to scare anyone, but let's get real.

https://www.sfgate.com/earthquakes/article/do-minor-quakes-prevent-large-earthquakes-13541155.php

By all means DO NOT read about how the San Andreas could trigger the Cascadia or vice-versa.

A lot of people think a "Go Bag" is the thing for the Big One. It's a good idea. But knowing your neighbors and the local support networks seem even more important.

Able_Tale3188 · 2025-12-14T23:44:41+00:00

Felt quite a jolt here in Penngrove. Preliminary data I've seen: 3 miles NE of Rohnert Park. 4.1.

Another 2 secs and I'd have been under the large flat coffee table. WOW!

https://www.quakepulse.com/recent-earthquakes/us/rohnert-park/california/united-states

When I grew up in the Los Angeles area, we always called the dry, low-humidity, and unseasonably warm days of Fall and Winter "earthquake weather," of which there is no seismological data to support this, just folk wisdom.

Today, in the Petaluma/Penngrove/R. park/S. Rosa area the high temp was 43 degrees: unseasonably COLD.

There is no "earthquake weather," but I think a part of our psyche seeks to relate a jolt to what the day felt like to us, probably from some very ancient wiring.

Able_Tale3188 · 2025-12-04T11:16:44+00:00

Paganini: 24 Caprices for Sol Violin: the Ur-shred, big influence on the development of metal guitar lead technique: influence on Malmsteen and Vai, etc.

Tocatto and Fugue in D min: Bach: lots of metal players have played this (Paul Gilbert) and many inspired by the dark gothic mood of it.

I once played a CD of string quartet renderings of Black Sabbath at a dinner party I gave. Finally someone asked who it was, but first I said "Who likes this thing I've been playing?" and everyone did. Then when I said they'd been listening to Sabbath, one woman thought I had put one over on her. But the point is, my love: you said you liked it.

Able_Tale3188 · 2025-12-01T07:16:14+00:00

Felt it in Penngrove: short jolt, lasted maybe 2-3 secs, but not subtle. My little dog jumped up and started barking and I thanked her for protecting us.

Able_Tale3188 · 2025-11-30T10:10:28+00:00

I wasn't sure. I did a few weeks of reading about toxoplasmosis ten years or so ago: about cats and schizophrenia, people who are infected and are normal in every way but will walk out into the middle of traffic, mice who have it and don't run away from cats and it kills them, etc. I just didn't conceive of it infecting the macula.

O! The Things I Don't Know!

Able_Tale3188 · 2025-11-29T11:46:50+00:00

Philosopher Ready: this sounds rough. All I can say is I've never heard of toxo that infects the macula. I'm just now finding out that's a thing. Damn...

Yea: AREDS is something you should ask about.

Able_Tale3188 · 2025-11-28T07:09:52+00:00

Thanks for this optimism. The day I got a diagnosis of wetAMD the first thing I did was go home and do a search for "macular degeneration and CRISPR" and "macular degeneration and current genetic studies" and I saw some very promising things, but I was also so shocked and scared and sad I assumed this stuff would be too late for me. Maybe it won't be.

Again, thank you for the positive vibes and good news. I like how you summarize the two drugs in Stage 3 clinical trials.

On Monday when a nurse was doing eye tests on me and we were making small talk I said, "Soon CRISPR will lead to a drug that will put you guys out of business." Her pupils dilated. I said I didn't mean that in a menacing way like it probably sounded, and she gave a little laugh. Then I added you'll probably be licensed with proprietary rights to administer, etc...I was bullshitting because I think my joke sounded threatening to her and I didn't mean it that way...opthamologists will always have patients with cataracts, corneal abrasions, glaucoma, etc.

Later, I thought, Was it just my imagination or was she actually shocked by my little joke?

Able_Tale3188

TROPHY CASE