The daylight has been increasing by 5 minutes per day, or more, since the solstice.  It is surprising how quickly the length of day increases with that steady amount.  Today the sun came up around 9am, and it'll go down around 7pm, and it won't be long before we'll have have 14 hours of sunlight.  What an odd occurrence that will be.

For most everybody who lives here daylight is rather not a factor.  I had the thought prior to making this relocation, that the long nights in the winter caused the depressions, which I have found to not be the case at all.  Certainly it is a different way of operating than I have been used to, however my 80 days' worth of experience is having me formulate a different idea; which we'll see how true that may be later.

I'm thinking that there are two issues that occur here, and when they do so simultaneously, symptoms of depression increase.  The first is lack of purpose.  I don't mean "job" so much in the way that people understand a job in the paycheck sense, but I mean a reason for getting up in the morning.  That purpose could just as easily be getting wood for heat or going to school in the morning.  Those that do have jobs here, tend to have their purpose clearly established and depression seems to be staved off.  (There is a flip-side to that:  others in the community attribute that role as belonging only to that one person, and therefore the weight of the community is felt by that one person, however that is a different topic, entirely.)

Identifying a purpose is rather false, unless that purpose is clear and has simply been avoided.  Having a person get up before the sun rises for the sole purpose of having something to do, is clearly circular and at best not helpful.  That purpose needs to be self-evident, not contrived.  Survival needs are clear, yet outside of that most "purposes" are perceived as doing something just to do it.  School, for instance is certainly something to do, yet the longer term reason to attend and graduate is lost as there is no population in their home-villages to support an industry or anything professional.  Which brings me to the second co-occuring contributor to depression.

Lack of people with which to interact is stifling.  Friends are family; cousins in one sense or another.  There are few people who can be looked up to as models of what can be achieved for others.  AA has little sobriety overall.  There are professionals in the area, but they are perceived as outsiders therefore they are not personal role-models.  This deprivation of forward-thinking is typically referred to as having lost the Native culture, and although that may be accurate, it is not enough for me to understand.  When the population was small, survival was the only option.  As the population has grown, more options have certainly become apparent however not viable, for a thousand different reasons I haven't yet identified.

Being alongside the rest of Americans who come here because they are professionals hasn't resulted in a mindset of, "let me do that too," but that of, "I'll never be able to do that."  I don't know where the fault lies, in the air of superiority of those who are professional, or the sense of helplessness of those who are not.  Either way, the long-timers have not been able to connect as equals with the newly transplanted professionals, and so their equals and friends are still their family.   The variety of people-groups in this area has not yet resulted in a large population though, and so industries are virtually 'assigned' to various ethnic backgrounds: Albanians are cab-drivers, Caucasians are professionals, Natives are substistence, Koreans are restaurant-owners.

Being acutely aware that there are innumerable choices yet still seeing only one option as realistic, has resulted in a perception of learned-helplessness -- depression.

Those that have a sense of purpose and are able to connect with others outside of their family seem to have less depressive symptoms.  In fact, these are the people that thrive here.  These people are able to see how the whole world is open before them if they set themselves up for it, and the opportunities here are seen as a spring-board into untold options all around.