For Utahns with seasonal depression, brighter days are here at last. 

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As a lifelong sufferer of SAD—Seasonal Affective Disorder—I've never fully enjoyed this time of year. SAD affects about 5% of all Americans, or about 10 million people like me who mal-adjust to there being less sunlight in the fall and winter months and who sleepily find themselves more sad, more tired, less motivated and less optimistic, all looped together by the belt that finds its way around our growing waistlines. It's depression.

It's a period when the sugar I've avoided all year long comes home to daddy. Solace resides in misery, I say. So, here it is just a few days before Christmas and I'm coasting along with nibbles of fudge (thanks Wes and M'Lisa), sugar cookies (thanks new neighbors, the Hodgson family), plus red and green gumdrops thanks to me (via an impulse buy this morning at Sprouts). I avoid sweets, astutely, all year long, but gobble them each December.

Additionally, I've eaten plates of bowtie pasta (thanks Kristen), a giant bag of caramel popcorn (thanks Atkinsons), nearly a loaf of warm sourdough bread (thanks Mr. Howell) and a good number of homemade toddies sourced from my friends at Sugar House, Ogden's Own, and High West Distilleries. My fridge is full of local brews and ciders. And never mind the recent breakfast meals that I usually confine to a either potatoes or toast. During SAD I feast on both. With ketchup.

Did you watch the series Ted Lasso? Episode 9 of Season 2 follows Coach Beard (basically the composite of every attribute, fear and failure of the Ted Lasso cast) as he navigates an evening of insecurity, self-depravity and self-discovery. During a long night his inner demons torture him through London's dark alleys. The episode befuddled Lasso fans, but perhaps less so others like me who know that depression is that maze of personal dark alleys.

Coach Beard's misadventure lasted that single night. My own begins just after Halloween and ends sometime into the new year, with Thanksgiving, my birthday, Christmas Day, New Year's Eve and New Year's Day all tucked inside.

Staying upbeat when the sun rises late and falls early presents certain challenges. I first became aware of them on my 13th birthday, when my mother presented me with the bow and arrow I had begged for from the aisles of Grand Central—which is now Chinatown—at 3400 S. State Street. I spent that day shooting arrows straight up into the air, then dodging them as they plunked all around me.

But today is December 21, 2024, the Winter Solstice. The sun tilts as far south as I ever want it to be and today it begins to journey northward. It's the shortest day of the year, as bad as it will get. Another corner has been turned and gradually the days will become longer, the hot-tubbing will occur in brighter hours—both morning and night—and the hummingbirds will again suck from the trumpet vines just a few feet from my wet toes.

The garden will produce another bounty of produce. The garlic—nearly 200 bulbs comprising four varieties that were planted in late October—will be the first to pierce the spring soil. I can't wait.

I've revealed little of my inner self on this page over the past 40 years and I can't really explain why I am now. But I do feel compelled—likely due to a recent Ted Lasso binge and watching everyone heal just by talking and looking deep into their mirror.

City Weekly has always exposed this nefarious criminal or that waste of flesh politician. That's all nice but the most meaningful work this newspaper ever did, the Ted Lasso work, were the reprisal stories of David battling Goliath, the stories not of creepy lust, sinful greed or reckless power, but the ones that spoke to the needs, desires and lives of everyday people. Those stories make me happy.

But it's also been lonely. Although I write in what some say is the lazy first person, except for snippets I've seldom written about my inner me. Except for being nakedly open before perhaps three people ever, I've never been able to talk about my own dark alleys without shielding behind a goblet of strong whiskey.

Our David stories were always about someone else, yet they were actually for me. Though I don't mind fighting bullies, I'm not David, and I'm not that tough, truth be told. It has been via those David stories that I've been able to find lightness and good in people even when I was challenged to be equally good myself. It's been a vicarious ride in other words.

Thus becomes today, which will brighten just a few minutes more in the next 24 hours that I feel needing to just expose a little more of myself than I was willing to only yesterday. It's been quite a journey, a lifetime of fighting what I can blessedly say is "mild" depression and feeling so badly for those who struggle more than myself.

My own depression magnifies during SAD, getting worse while ironically making it also seem to be temporary. Nuking it all with 40 years of newspaper publishing has been a counterintuitive palative. It's too late to start over, but honestly, I'd rather have been a troubadour.

So, I'll just resolve to stay alert in 2025 against all our demons, to be less affected by SAD, and to use my Happy Light more often. I'll try to somehow aid others who are similarly affected, to savor the sun, and to oppose those bastards now elevating to power who enjoy knifing the free press while also exploiting it.

They've become Goliath and we can't let them do that. Losing to petty, greedy, selfish gnomes would be SAD.

Send comments to john@cityweekly.net