Most autumn journals open with a claim that is not supported. “The days get shorter, mood sinks.” For this booklet I went and read what the research actually shows — and it supports that sentence far less well than the shelf of autumn self-help books beside it suggests. In a US survey of 34,294 adults, no association could be shown between depressive symptoms and season, latitude or hours of sunshine.
The button takes you straight to this item on Etsy. Once you have paid, the PDFs are ready to download.
A smaller group of people genuinely is affected by the season — around five per cent, plus nine per cent in a milder form, estimated from screening questionnaires. For them it is real, and for them there is something better than a writing booklet. That is on page 3, together with the note about when to see a doctor.
What does change reliably is something else: the light, and with it the rhythm of the day. When you are outside, when the evening begins, when you stop working. That is where this booklet starts.
Eight chapters, twenty-eight prompts:
–The Shift — what is moving right now, without judging it
–Getting Light — the part with the largest sample
–When It Gets Dark Earlier — the evening moves forward
–Grey Days — for days that give you nothing
–Switching Off — the end of the day as a transition
–Slowing Down — less, and how much of it comes from you
–The Evening — lists instead of turning things over
–What Stays — looking back, thanks, looking ahead
Under every chapter you find what the research says — and where it stops. With effect size, sample and what the study does not show. One chapter states outright that one of the methods named did not improve sleep in a randomised trial.
What you get
01A booklet with 20 content pages + info page, including a contents page, a page placing the studies in context and two pages for when writing gets hard
02Four writing sheets to reprint — daylight note, evening page, a sheet for two lists, a free page
03Every file also as an ink-saving edition: identical text, around half the ink — marked “ink_saving” in the file name
04Fourteen original watercolour illustrations, no stock imagery
05Four writing lines in every chapter — you do not have to print a sheet for every answer
