I'm coming to the conclusion that sunlight is addictive.
Where I grew up, overcast was the default, and any scrap of blue sky was worth remarking on, even more so if it was angled to let a shaft of sunlight fall somewhere on the landscape. I carried an umbrella everywhere and got a splitting headache if I spent more than a few minutes in full sun. For the last eight years, though, I've lived in the US Southwest, where the clouds are the rare and remarkable phenomena and nobody even notices a flawless sky. Once in a great while we get a day that is mostly grey. I have an odd reaction to those days; part of me relaxes into the bone-deep familiarity of soft billows of grey, but there's another part that has definitely developed at least a tolerance for bright light, if not a dependence on it. On grey days around here, everyone is sleepy and slow, and I'm no better than anyone else. The cloud this morning wasn't even thick, but I was barely awake most of the morning, and only started to feel human again when the sky cleared in the afternoon.
Where I grew up, overcast was the default, and any scrap of blue sky was worth remarking on, even more so if it was angled to let a shaft of sunlight fall somewhere on the landscape. I carried an umbrella everywhere and got a splitting headache if I spent more than a few minutes in full sun. For the last eight years, though, I've lived in the US Southwest, where the clouds are the rare and remarkable phenomena and nobody even notices a flawless sky. Once in a great while we get a day that is mostly grey. I have an odd reaction to those days; part of me relaxes into the bone-deep familiarity of soft billows of grey, but there's another part that has definitely developed at least a tolerance for bright light, if not a dependence on it. On grey days around here, everyone is sleepy and slow, and I'm no better than anyone else. The cloud this morning wasn't even thick, but I was barely awake most of the morning, and only started to feel human again when the sky cleared in the afternoon.