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This also functions quite well as a New Year’s resolution:

Continue playing with Run At The Dog.

“Chex Mix”

“Noon Moon”

“Superior Headwear Anthem (Lampshade)”

Now that I’ve been implementing Part 1 of my Winter Survival Strategy thoroughly and consistently every day for the last three weeks—getting back into shape, developing a robust cardiovascular system and toned musculature, neither Taking My Eyes Off the Prize nor Giving Up the Dream, and most certainly never interrupting my fitness regimen for five days so I could go home for the holidays and sleep till noon and lie on the couch watching The Simpsons—I am feeling better about the season and less vulnerable to the various perils of another Minnesota winter.

Of course, another key component of my Winter Survival Strategy, and General Life Survival Strategy in General, is music. So Part 2 of my Winter Survival Strategy is called:

Music, Duh.

Something curious happens to my music-listening habits toward the beginning of a season, as my playlists shift subtly, then dramatically, toward the music that has traditionally provided the soundtrack to a given season. This means that, as October turns to November, I go from Peter Gabriel’s Us (which dominated fall 1992) to Yes’ Fragile (which dominated November of … 1992).

I realize this kind of regression is not entirely healthy. But I find myself taking refuge in this “comfort music” when other aspects of life aren’t quite as stable, or while experiencing a dearth of daylight and temperatures that don’t kill elderly people.

In fact, I have a playlist on my computer right now named “Regression” that is almost entirely composed of the old prog rock I listened to throughout high school; more specifically, the albums I listened to a lot in the winter: Genesis’ Wind & Wuthering, The Yes Album, Dark Side of the Moon, King Crimson’s Discipline.

On those rare occasions when I seem incapable of doing anything but lying on my couch during The Gloaming, I cue up this playlist and turn on the Christmas lights I’ve hung around the windows and I can almost—almost—believe that I’m fifteen again.

What makes this behavior just a shade less than totally pathetic is that I supplement my Regression playlist with music that isn’t older than I am. I still acquire and listen to and become completely enraptured with new music, even the Best New Music, on a regular basis. Now watch how stealthily I transition into that most dreaded yet inevitable year-end blogtrend, the Best-Of List. Sneaky, right?

Perhaps I can mitigate the B-o-L’s music-wonk pomposity by stating that I’ve probably put less thought into this list than ever before, and I’m not going to supplement it with barely relevant personal narratives or high-concept ostentation. It’s just there, and it’ll only take up a second of your time. Nor am I going to rank them, instead listing them chronologically, because these are the albums that accompanied my life in 2008, and in return, my life gave them a narrative.

Atlas Sound, Let The Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel
Goldfrapp, Seventh Tree
DJ Shadow & Cut Chemist, The Hard Sell
School of Language, Sea From Shore
Elbow, The Seldom Seen Kid
Kaki King, Dreaming of Revenge
Sun Kil Moon, April
M83, Saturdays=Youth
Subtle, ExitingArm
The Whigs, Mission Control
The Annuals/Sunfold, Wet Zoo EP
Portishead, Third
Dosh, Wolves & Wishes
Sunfold, Toy Tugboats
The Hold Steady, Stay Positive
Girl Talk, Feed the Animals
My Morning Jacket, Evil Urges
David Byrne & Brian Eno, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today
The Bird & The Bee, Please Clap Your Hands EP
TV on the Radio, Dear Science
The Dears, Missiles
School of Seven Bells, Alpinisms
Alias, Resurgam
Flying Lotus, Los Angeles
Hatchback, Colors of the Sun

Update my blog more often.

For reals.

In the meantime, happy holidays, y’all.

I’ve made no secret of my secret abiding irrational fear of The Gloaming, that horrible gunmetal-gray time of day when the sky turns the color of Kaopectate and my circadian rhythms go into a tailspin and I begin to feel as if I’m living in Norway, with access to none of that country’s wonderful things [1] and all of its bad ones [2].

Despite having grown up just a few latitudes south of Minneapolis, with all the various horrors and joys of Midwestern winters inculcated in me from birth, I am beginning to fear that I have some latent form of Seasonal Affective Disorder which is slowly but surely getting worse every winter. The Gloaming never used to bother me; in fact, I embraced it as a child because it meant coming in from playing in the snow and drinking hot chocolate and watching TV. [3] It meant dinner. Even in college I didn’t mind it so much because I didn’t really appreciate sunlight anyway, holed up as I was in some corner of the library or convalescing with friends in the soulless artificial light of the dining hall.

Indeed, it seems like getting through the winter used to be much easier. For most of my twenties my winter survival strategies used to lean pretty heavily on music and drinking and a general embrace of the sedentary lifestyle, especially during the long January-February stretch. But these last couple winters I’ve been horrified to realize that none of that will cut it anymore. [4]

Maybe it has something to do with getting older. Maybe it’s because I’ve turned into one of those assholes who goes running every day, so now I appreciate the time I’m able to spend outdoors during the spring, summer, and fall. Maybe it’s because I’ve also turned into one of those assholes who rides his bike everywhere, so I resent the extra steps and layers that winter cycling requires. I can still do both of those things—run and ride my bike—but it’s not as effortless, or as warm.

Don’t get me wrong—I’m not thrilled about the daily jogging and biking thing. I’m one of those assholes, but I’m by no means proud of it. It kind of pisses me off, in fact: all that effort and energy and moisture-wicking fabric expended in the service of maintaining even a baseline level of happiness (BLH), and it’s certainly not as immediately gratifying or decadent or socially stimulating as, say, drinking and sleeping.

But it appears to be my only recourse, for now. Which is why it is the first and most crucial component of my Winter Survival Strategy, a many-pronged regimen of BLH-maintenance I’ve developed with the help of others who suffer similarly. I’ve named this component:

Exercise, Unfortunately.

This means I have to go running outside, in temperatures as low as 20°F, wearing three or four layers up top and two down below and those sissified wool gloves that sissies wear. And, sometimes, something called a neck gator.

It means that when I ride my bike I will be wearing the aforementioned layers and gator, along with wool socks [5], fancy futuristic gloves over my aforementioned sissy gloves, a headband, a hat, a helmet, an extra jacket [6], and goggles. That’s right, goggles. Like, the kind that normal people wear to go skiing but that assholes wear to ride bikes. It means I will buy different-sized bike tubes so I can switch out my road tires and put my snow tires on.

So that does it for biking. But I still want to run [7], and when the temperature drops below 20°F [8], I will take my regimen indoors, because I am resolutely not a badass (just an asshole). Now, just where does one go running in Minneapolis in the winter?

In the Metrodome, apparently. That’s right: the place where the Twins and the Vikings, two professional teams of sports players, sometimes play. What I discovered just recently is that the upper deck of the stadium is opened twice a week to assholes who want to run in circles on it, for just $1 a visit. 2.5 laps around the stadium = one mile, which means I can run my minimum distance of 3 miles in just 7.5 laps. Emily and Maryhope and I tried this recently. I turned on my fancy iPhone-based GPS for Assholes so I could keep track of our distance, and our afternoon looked like this:

The novelty of running in the Metrodome sustained us for about three laps, and then we just got kind of bored. [9] In the end, we decided it was the sort of thing we’d be content to do maybe once a month.

But once a month isn’t going to cut it [10] if I’m going to maintain a daily BLH. This is how I found myself standing in the lobby of the Downtown Minneapolis YMCA, gatored and goggled, applying for a membership. The YMCA offers income-based memberships on a sliding scale, and since my income is four dollars a month, they were willing to slide pretty far for me. The good news is that soon everybody will be able to get great bargains on income-based memberships because everyone will be laid off.

So that’s where I am right now. Well, not right now: right now I’m sitting in a coffeeshop on the west edge of downtown, watching the snow fall while my sweat- and spit-moistened neck gator dries off. In a little while I will activate tonight’s component of my Winter Survival Strategy, which will involve putting on my gator and goggles and riding a few blocks west to the YMCA and running on the treadmill for 45 minutes, then sitting in the sauna far too long, then seeing if I can get from the Y’s third floor to the downtown Target via the Skyway, just to see if I can. Such is the modest extent of my enterprising spirit right now. It is winter, after all.

[1] (functional public healthcare, Annie)

[2] (four months of near-constant darkness, lutefisk)

[3] (the MTV Top 20 Countdown hosted by Adam Curry; Double Dare)

[4] “It” referring here to “the mustard.”

[5] (also for sissies)

[6] (or “thermal shell,” if you’re an asshole)

[7] Or not “want to run” but rather “need to run if I don’t want to hate myself, life, and God around about the time The Gloaming commences”

[8] (which will happen in Minneapolis approximately now, and continue until the second week of May)

[9] Running past a deserted nacho cart seven times is Kafkaesque but hardly exhilarating.

[10] See note #4 supra.