I am a notoriously positive person. A local radio personality, Paul W. Smith, likes to push listeners to a “relentless positive attitude” on air and I’ve tried to live that. However, every stinkin’ year around the middle of November, when the weather turns to crap (cold, wet, gloomy), I basically lose my $#!+. I don’t necessarily suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder, but I don’t do well without the sunshine. Between, say, May and October I get plenty of sunshine (a minimum of 15 minutes a day without sunscreen) but that’s impossible from November through March. It’s just too cold to run around with more than a few square inches of skin showing.

My positive attitude becomes a lot more work.

Invariably, long about the first few weeks of January I remember that my doctor once prescribed Vitamin D for me and maybe I should take it.  I do, and that’s about that.  I may have noticed a minor change here or there, but I only take the little capsule when I remember, so it’s sporadic at best.

This year, I started early and managed to take my 5,000 IU capsule regularly and what a difference!

Now, being a person having recovered from (and who is continuously in the process of recovering from) addiction, I spend a lot of time paying attention to what goes on in my head.  The difference isn’t some magical creature that sprinkled pixie dust over me and has me all happy now.  No, only cocaine and a few other illicit drugs do that well, folks.  Not that I know… erm… you know what?  Let’s just move along! 

Anyway, the difference is in my thought process, or more specifically, the quality of thoughts that pop into my melon out of nowhere or better, that second thought is vastly superior.

Now, if you pay attention to what goes on in your melon, being a person of exceptional nuttiness, if you want to be normal you come to find that you can’t do anything about those crazy first thoughts that pop into your head.  You can’t control them.  They’re just there, like a stinky fart you walk into at the grocery store.  It’s not like you could see the flatus sitting there in the air, right?  Nope, all of a sudden your eyes start watering and you’re forehead deep in fart.  Well, that first crazy thought is a lot like that.  What matters is the second thought.  I can control that one.  It’s what I do with the first thought that matters.

As an example, let’s say the random thought that I’d like to get good and $#!+-faced pops into my head (it has in the past, though it’s been a while).  I can’t do anything about that first thought, it’s just there.  I don’t entertain that thought, though.  I don’t allow it validity.  Who gives a flying f*** why it popped in there, crazy $#!+ happens!  My second thought it, “Man, that’d be stupid.  I’ll throw that first thought in the garbage.”  With practice, this works and doesn’t require more drugs.  

Now, what Vitamin D does is it makes those second thoughts faster, better, and happier.  It makes the response to the crazy “better”.  Therefore, I’m dealing with less “crazy” rattling around up in my melon, therefore life feels happier… so let’s say it isn’t necessarily a lack of crazy, it just makes handling “crazy” easier.

UPDATE: It’s 1,000, not 5,000.