Winter Activities

My DBT therapist Lori H. assigned me a new homework task. I was to come up with a list of activities that I can do during the winter months. I’m posting about that.

To explain, I get very afraid of the long, dark, cold days of December through March in Canada. It’s very hard to keep my spirits up when the sun sets at 4:30 pm, and I can’t sit outside on my porch. Part of my solution has been to simply go away during that period, visiting friends and family in warm, sunny locales. I’ll do some of that again this year. However, I can’t be a true “snow bird” yet; so, I need to find things to keep me productively occupied during Ontario’s winter.

There are some away-from-home activities that I have been doing in the past and I plan to continue doing them. Going out for meals with friends, going to art house movies, taking in live theatre — all of these can be done regardless of the weather. I had been playing bridge at a club in the burbs, and I could easily go back to that too. In addition, I have been taking refugee friends out for driving lessons since mid-summer. I love the social connection with young people, and I like the resulting feeling of helping others. I can continue to do that as well, at least until the roads get hazardous. There’s also winter birding, though there’s not much to see in February!

And, of course, there are many things that I presently do at home which I won’t give up just because it’s dreary out: reading the newspaper and some fiction, watching Netflix with Anita, philosophical writing, enjoying our cats. I need to get back into baking too, both bread and other treats.

There are also some activities that have fallen by the wayside that I can take up again. Years ago, I took weekly skating lessons. (This was before my legs were healed enough to run, after being hit by a car.) I really enjoyed learning how to skate properly, and was making progress on fancy stuff like cross-overs and skating backwards on one foot. When I started running again, though, that crowded out the skating. Now that I have time on my hands, I really should look into starting such lessons again. Even more years ago than that, I sometimes went cross-country skiing with friends. I was very much an amateur, and I’d like to learn how to do it properly, but Nordic skiing was something I enjoyed very much back in graduate school. Unfortunately, though still too cold and dark for me, London, Ontario is no longer wintry enough to permit much local cross-country skiing. But I could make trips up to Barrie to see family, and do some skiing near there.

Speaking of skiing, I feel torn about another favourite hobby from the past. It takes me so long to recover from injuries nowadays that I am a bit scared of taking up downhill again. Well okay, I’m much more than a bit scared! Last year, you see, I went out twice. I was very, very careful and cautious. Nonetheless, on the second outing, a snowboarder came out of nowhere from behind me, and knocked me down. It took a month for my neck to heal and I wasn’t able to ski again that year. The possibility of injury really makes me wonder about Alpine skiing at my age.

Dear reader, please suggest additional activities. Oh, and if you are heading to sun and sand this winter, think about taking me with you!