winter bingo
how to trick yourself into managing seasonal depression
I have been half-joking all week that I am attempting to executive function my way out of depression. Buying tickets to local theater shows, making plans to see Wicked, trying new workout classes. Turning outward towards community, movement, and time with good people, instead of inward towards anxiety spirals, has been the best antidote to all kinds of bad feelings. It’s not right, but I’m somehow okay?
Anyways, I want to share something I tried last winter that made me wayyy less sad.
Winter bingo is a 5x5 idea list for seasonal/indoor chill activities I either want to try or know I enjoy. Three words: low stakes fun. Tricking myself into managing seasonal depression requires adjusting to a lower energy level; even my beloved to-do list feels too aggressive. Coloring in squares and aiming for a single bingo - only 4 things with a free space! - seemed way more achievable (10,000 IUs of daily Vitamin D also helps).
Last year, I got four bingos. This year, I am hoping for five. I will be happy with one.
Playing winter bingo from November - March brought me so much joy and reminded me what is special about the darkest time of year. Even if I dragged my feet, I felt better every single time I completed an activity. I am grateful to have found something that works for my brain. I cannot wait to see what memories this year brings.
If you do decide to partake in the 2024-25 winter bingo extravaganza, a few tips from a seasoned pro:
You can get a template (and see my 2024 version) here. Drawing your own is also fun.
Pick things you actually want to do/try for each square. Include things you know you like and want to do again.
Think of anything indoors that you wouldn’t want to do when it’s nice outside.
Keep your bingo sheet somewhere where you can see it every day. I keep mine at my desk, so I can easily make plans for an open weekend.
Feel free to double dip winter bingo with other goals.
good things on the internet
Saeed Jones My Project 2025 poem ✍️
once again recommending Girl Historians, “Call Her Daddy for girls who had a Hamilton phase” 🎙️
Phoebe Gibb on digital bedrooms had me remembering my teenage closet door plastered with home-printed photos of Panic! At the Disco 🛏️
this 🪧
currently reading
10 ways to be prepared and grounded now that Trump has won by Daniel Hunter: If you are in the right headspace to absorb information, this is the most helpful piece I have read on what comes next and what to do about it.
The Warrior Mamas Who Elected Trump by Sara Petersen:
“The proliferation of tradwives on social media is not a silly trend from which we can afford to look away. It’s not solely a marketing strategy to gain eyeballs and sell calico dresses. It’s an ideology steeped in internalized misogyny and repressive political goals. And the women peddling this ideology are very good at dressing subjugation and white male supremacy up in pretty bows to the millions of white women looking for a better way to live.”
How America Embraced Gender War by Jia Tolentino: I cannot stop thinking about her closing paragraph -
“For those of us whom God made heterosexual, the intimate realm is politicized now more than ever. But it’s from this foundation that we find a way out. It’s from here, in the arena of flesh and friction and surprise and transcendence—an arena that may be increasingly foreign to screen-bound, isolated, radicalized young men, and rightfully unappealing to their female counterparts—that we learn not just when to take up arms against another person but when to try harder to see them, or allow them to change us. It’s here that we learn how badly we need one another, in the end.”
this week’s jam
photo of my cats
