We often link each season to certain moods: Fall’s pleasant melancholy, Winter’s slow blues, Spring’s hopeful awakening, and Summer’s carefree chaos. You might see the seasons a bit differently, but it’s likely not too far off, right? When did you first start feeling emotionally swayed by the seasons? I recall getting sentimental in Fall, even before I had enough life experience to warrant it. Some breeze in the end of September would hit me just right and I would start sympathizing with Frank Sinatra lamenting about being in his fifties – making me feel like an old soul wandering the earth in a 10 year old’s body.

Is this emotional response a natural trait? Maybe Nature is trying to get us organized before Winter; like squirrels stockpiling acorns, it makes us so reflective we stop tossing that frisbee and opt for emotional preparation instead. What about people in the mild, stable climates like San Francisco? Do they miss these seasonal triggers, or are they content without them? If a San Franciscan moves to Indiana, do they suddenly crave summer’s trappings, like trampolines and hot dogs? And if a Indianan relocates to San Francisco, do they yearn for snowy winter days spent indoors with hot toddies and board games?

Those Winter blues are real, especially after the emotional roller coaster of Christmas and New Years. We commit to New Years resolutions, hoping they’ll add a spark to the dull, dreary months ahead. But – more often than not – the glow of these goals dims quickly. The physical and mental bleakness of winter makes it hard to stay motivated, transforming our eagerly planned resolutions into daunting chores as the season drags on. Goals initially welcomed with excitement might retreat into the shadows as we slog through the long, chilly weeks.

Do old “snowbirds” that flee the Northeast for Florida really avoid these feelings simply by changing climates? Or do they sit on the beach and squabble with their spouses just as if they were cooped up in their New Jersey kitchens? Maybe it works like bird migration, and perhaps it’s a psychological band-aid or snow-shoveling avoidance tactic. My own winter jaunt to a tropical escape left me feeling disconnected. I couldn’t connect to my surroundings and may as well have been at home bruising my tailbone twice a day on the sidewalk ice. Maybe it wasn’t the location, it was the calendar. Though, if that were the case though with the majority of us, those human snowbirds wouldn’t exist. Or, is the snowbird phenomena purely based on an aversion to cold weather, and not an attempt to thwart the Winter blues?

Ugh, enough about those blues eh? What makes us create then embrace the Summer enthusiasm? By the end of the Summer, I’m sure we can all agree that initial spark has been extinguished with either sweat or a poorly aimed squirt of bugspray. Pretty easy answer on the celebratory air as Summer launches; school’s out! For a dozen plus years of our childhood lives, we looked forward to that last bell ringing at the beginning of June. As with everything, the imagined fun and adventure greatly exceeded the ACTUAL fun and adventure, and by August we were privately looking forward to school starting back up. But by the time the next June rolled back around, the mild disappointments of the previous Summer were mostly forgotten, and that new set of hope and expection was forged. As adults, nothing really changes schedule-wise between Spring and Summer, but the thrill is still there, isn’t it?

Now Spring—let’s not buy into the hype. It’s often either chilly enough to wreck Spring break plans or warm enough to push our pale limbs into premature exposure. Unless you’re in the beloved San Francisco, it’s constantly soggy, and pollen turns tissues into your best friend. Don’t expect too much from “glorious Spring.”

It’s either cold enough to ruin Spring break plans or warm enough to force our pale Winter bodies into body-revealing clothing too early. Unless you’re in San Francisco, it’s always wet wet wet and our noses are wet wet wet from those too damn excited plants spewing their sex stuff into the air. I’ve learned not to expect too much from the “glorious Spring”, other than the excitement for the mellow Summer days ahead.

To wrap up:

Winter = blues, even for the snowbirds.

Spring = seasonal disappointment.

Summer = eternal childhood.

Fall = forever favorite, making even a ten-year-old feel all nostalgic. As the child grows into an adult, so does that emotion. If Frank Sinatra made a hit out of that exact factuality, you KNOW it’s true.