Enclosure

Winter is hard on me, especially in the northeast where the sun sets just after 4PM around the solstice.

I stumbled upon the framing of treating my apartment like an enclosure for a creature in captivity, emphasizing the importance of including "enrichment" to avoid agitation.

I'm a long-time minimalist (which also feeds into my frugal FIRE sensibilities), but sometime that combination skews overly spartan in a way where I deprive myself of comforts in service of one label or the other. I've slowly added "non-essential" improvements over the years (first furniture, then art, then plants), but have remained discontent with my bedroom, which gets the least light and has the least amount of space.

So this winter, I decided it was time to invest in lighting. I opted for a couple of colorful LED "neon" tube lights^[1] and a few paper lantern-style lamps, and my space has become significantly more comfortable. The warm lighting is comfortable without making me sleepy, and being able to turn on a webcam and see a reasonably-lit face in a room that doesn't embarrass me has been a huge quality-of-life improvement.

I've always been grateful for my south-facing living room window for giving me such good light during the day, but there's no good reason it's taken me this long to artificially improve the lighting in the darker corners of my apartment.