I hate driving home from work in the winter.  Or rather, I hate how the drive becomes a drive home in the winter, as the light gradually fades from day to day, like a dying campfire, until the sky bruises into an ugly purple and eventually turns oil black.  In the summer I barrel down the freeway; in the winter I slog through shadows.  Voices whisper to me: You’re done.  You’re going home.  Watch some TV, maybe read, but don’t go anywhere.  Don’t see a friend.  Don’t go to the gym.  Lie down.  Play dead. You’re done.  You’re done.  You’re done.

“Shut up,” I say, “I don’t have to listen to you.”

But everyone else is listening to us.

And it’s true.  I turn from side to side and I see my fellow commuters, their faces green from dashboard lights, and no one sings despite the fact that we’re almost invisible to each other.  This is the perfect opportunity to sing!  Even the shyest among us can belt out tunes in the cover of darkness.  We could roll down our windows and exchange favorite songs.  Right now, for example, I could do Belle and Sebastian’s “I Fought in a War.” And you sir?  Classical music?  That’s fine; let us hear you hum Berlioz.  Do it “LA-LA-LA” style so we can all hear it over the sounds of our engines.  Or we could all join forces and do a Barbershop’s Quartet, a perfect, egalitarian team of Civic, Camry, Ford, and BMW racing together down highway 580.

But the darkness confounds our intentions, saps our energy, and leaves us voiceless.  We’re tricked into believing that we won’t live again until the morning--but even the new day offers few opportunities because it’s bookended by darkness, broken up only by hours of fluorescent lights, meeting requests, and bitter coffee.

I’d like to say that I have something inspirational to close this with, some tried-and-true method for defeating defeatism.  And of course, one does things even in the winter; I’m simply saying that in order to do so, the deck is stacked and you have to fight to beat the odds.  It’s inescapable.  But I can say that around this time of year, you begin to see the oil black turn swirly with purples and blues, and you know that time is suddenly on your side again, and eventually the shadows will slither away.  Soon you can leave work and drive off into a blinding brightness.  You can go running or eat at a new restaurant and--this is the weird thing--stay out after dark gladly, because staying up late on a hot night is like a comforting embrace, whereas staying up on a cold night is like a hard slap.  And new voices start whispering to you, soothing ones, and they tell you: “You’re free, don’t go home, come play, come play, you’re just getting started, you’re going places, come play, come play, come play.” And you say “Wait just one moment and I’ll be right with you. I’m examining winter’s corpse and making sure it’s good and dead and won’t come back until it’s supposed to, because the last thing I need is the lights going out in the middle of April.”