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Showing posts from March, 2013

Fiction is healing

I've had the winter blues.  Only in my case they seem to be the winter blacks.  Even though I'm living someplace was ample sunshine, I still think I get Seasonal Affective Disorder or SAD.  A psychiatrist-friend of mine told me that was impossible, but I swear every February I sink into a nearly unrecoverable funk!  It feels like a black shroud of self-doubt, un-motivation, depression, lethargy, weight gain hangs over my head and I can't shake it.  But I have found something that helps. Reading fiction. Back in the ole college days, I took a class titled "Communication in Fiction."  (Aren't you jealous?  What a great class!  I mean I got college credit talking about books!)  It's more than escapism.  I know a lot of people who poo-poo the value of fiction as something we need.  I disagree.  Fiction is a life blood.  My professor theorized that we actually need to read fiction.  During the time we read, fiction specifically, we meet a problem and have