I’ve spent the past 11 months dreading the return of March, but now that it’s here it doesn’t seem so bad.

It was right around this time last year when I had my great moment of clarity. I looked outside, and saw a dreary wasteland. “Yuck,” I said, shutting the curtains to block out the depressing view. But it wasn’t just the weather that was getting to me. It was the whole atmosphere. Things felt stagnant. There didn’t seem to be anything to look forward to.

Finally, a little light bulb went off in my head.

“Aha,” I said. “March is the worst month of the year.” Which came as something of a revelation, because I’d always viewed January and February as far more problematic. But those months had been surprisingly enjoyable. I’d done all sorts of fun things that you can’t do in the summer, like cross-country ski and go down the Olympic bobsled run at Lake Placid. “Hey,” I said, “winter’s not so bad.” Then I hit the wall. March, you see, is a deceptive month. Sort of the Trojan Horse of months. Viewed from a distance, it looks relatively benign, and you actually look forward to its coming. But when it does finally arrive, you realize that it’s just not the month you thought it was. That it’s still too cold and barren and stormy. And long. March is just an extremely long month.

Last year, March caught me unawares. Call it an extreme case of cabin fever. I hated everything, and everyone; a mental collapse seemed imminent. “I’ve got to get out of here,” I said. And so I booked a trip to North Carolina on a cheap airline; when the airline went out of business, I almost wept. Fortunately, I managed to find another cheap flight.

Because for a while there, I really felt like I was losing my mind. “If I don’t go to North Carolina, I may not survive,” I told someone. March had put me in a particularly melodramatic frame of mind.

There are several reasons why this March isn’t as bad as last March.

For one thing, the weather has been milder. There aren’t that many times of year when you can cross-country ski and ride your bike, but I’ve already managed to do that a couple times this month. Sure, I had to travel an hour north to find snow, but it was worth it. The time change has also helped. For some reason, I don’t remember last year’s time change making much of a difference. This year, though, it seems huge. Just knowing that it’s not going to be pitch dark when I get home from work, and that I could actually go for a walk without fearing for my life, is nice.

But the biggest reason for my improved March may be my upcoming vacation.

After last year’s near-mental collapse, I resolved to always take a spring vacation, and this year I’m going to California in April. The ostensible purpose of this trip is a wedding in Los Angeles, but the wedding has almost become incidental: I’m flying in and out of San Francisco, seeing a bunch of old friends, and driving up and down the coast. Just thinking about it makes me happy. Ha ha, March! You can’t get me down! I’m going away!

For me, vacations are restorative. They clear the mind, and remind me of what’s good about the world. Some people have a hard time forgetting about work when they go on vacation; one friend says that it takes her about three vacation days to fully relax, and that she spends another two days worrying about the return to work, which means that she only gets two or three real vacation days. But I don’t have that problem. As soon as I leave this office, it’s like The Daily Gazette doesn’t even exist.

I tend to be enthusiastic about my vacations. That’s my word for it; others might prefer obnoxious, or irritating. For reasons that I don’t fully understand, not everyone appreciates my nonstop chatter about how much I’m looking forward to a vacation, or the way I ask “Guess who’s going on vacation next week?” at least 10 times an hour. The same friend who cannot relax on her vacations likes to remind me that vacations come to an end. I always have a hard time coming up with a rebuttal because, unfortunately, she’s right.

But that’s no reason not to go on vacation, and I’m sorry that not everyone has the means or time to take one. Society would be better off, I think, if everyone took at least one nice long trip a year and recharged their batteries. At the very least, it would make March more palatable.

Foss Forward makes a weekly appearance in print, in The Gazette’s Saturday Lifestyles section.