Hi,

As someone who grew up in southwestern US in the desert, I absolutely detest sunlight and sunny days and the concept of a seemingly universal "nice weather" description meaning 80F and sunny or whatever it means to the majority of people.

Unlike you though I don't have hypothyroidism (that i know of but I'm quite sure I'm healthy), and I have never been diagnosed or claim to have: depression, social anxiety, etc.

It's just that the idea of being outside in the sun isn't a pleasant idea for me at all. I don't know about you and most others, but growing up where I did there was no such thing as "playing outside" when I was younger because it was always like 110+F every single day of summer, which was like half the year. The 3 months of winter it was cooler at around maybe 60F in the mornings maybe, to 80-90F in the day, or something like that. In all seasons it was sunny, about 99% of the time and this is not hyperbole. It hardly ever rained, it hardly ever got cloudy, it hardly ever did anything except "sunny and blazing hot" to "sunny and mildly hot."

As a teenager my instincts were: "I'm in my air conditioned house right now, I need to walk super duper fast to get to my car and start it up and turn the AC on full blast, then I need to drive to the store/school/work and prepare myself to step outside back into the 110F heat and walk as fast as I can to get back inside."

As an adult noped at the thought of doing this my whole life and moved away.

Today I live in the PNW region where it supposedly rains all the time. It doesn't, or at least not like I thought. Unlike my peers and coworkers I love it when the weather is "awful." The rain literally doesn't bother me: grab a rain coat. The snow when it happens doesn't bother me because surprise I love being cold. I go running in the snow in the mornings---in shorts. I don't understand the people running in tights. Why would you want to be warm? Is my thought.

I love working in the winter, and I'm absolutely more productive. I LIKE waking up when it's dark, going to work when the dark, and I don't MIND leaving work when it's dark.

I HATE waking up when it's light, and I HATE getting to work when it's light because I feel like I'm so late. Despite me getting in to work at 7am well before anyone else.

During grad school I spent one semester in Norway for an internship, in the winter. People told me oh it's gonna be awful, you're not gonna see the sun. TLDR, I survived, and I would love to live in that environment but just not in Norway (nothing against that country, id rather prefer to live in the PNW where at minimal the culture is "American" and the language is English).

All through my adult life I have been "fighting" with friends and family who tell me "it's just a phase, you'll hate the snow soon enough." Except, I left the southwest when I was 18. I'm 31 now. My feelings and thoughts on this still haven't changed.

Perhaps it's all in my mind. Sometimes I joke about how my childhood in the desert scared me for life and now these are all "repressed feelings." Either way I don't care. I don't like being outside in the sun, I don't like working in the sun, I don't like sunlight. I prefer the rain, clouds, snow, "awful terrible depressing weather." I wake up and look out the window and see it's rainy and overcast and I'm in a much better mood than if my room is all lit up from the sunlight.