East because that's where the Lake is.

Picture yourself in a boat on a river with tangerine trees and marmalade skies.

West is forward to me. Extrapolate the rest on your own.

*puts on looking glass cravat*

East. The ocean.

I can only think of this in terms of maps. Most people I know orient the map around themselves, so the map is "facing" in the same direction they are. I hold the map north up but mentally reorient myself around the map without moving my body.

If I don't have a map I'll check the time and the position of the sun and make a wild guess.

I believe it is mainly the bulb, but not those "daylight" bulbs you can pick up easily most places, as lux plays a big role in the whole sheebang.

East. I always wake up to the sun shining in my face. How I will miss that next year (our dorm does not have many windows. I fear I will become quite depressed in the winter...).

I'm facing south. Maybe turned a little southwest.

Since I stand at the North Pole, I always face south.

I stand at the North Pole too if I envision standing on the globe. If I picture myself standing on a map, I'm on the state of Florida looking south.

I'm not sure what you're asking. I am standing on the globe, or rather I'm sitting in a chair in the upstairs of a two-storey building on it, and I'm facing roughly east, though I swivel around a lot in my chair.

Picture yourself when you're growing old/ Sat by the fireside pondering on.

If you are confused check with the sun
Carry a compass to help you along
Your feet are going to be on the ground
Your head is there to move you around

South, always. I think it's because I want to explore South America more. And oddly, I'm standing roundabout Wisconsin. I lived there for six years, but have since returned to my native California.

I have no personal experience with seasonal affective disorder. However, when the winter dryness got me itchy and red, I'd visit to the Domes, outside Milwaukee or to Olbrich Garden "dome" in Madison and strip down to a tank top and shorts and just sit for a few hours. It was bliss, I tell you! Now that I'm back in the SF bay area, I kind of miss the whole ritual.

I stand on Alaska, and I'm facing south.

My standard mental orientation is facing north, standing on a Mercator projection (the standard map of Kansas school classrooms in the early '60s, where I first was exposed to geography), in the Central or Eastern time zone. I often still think of place distances from the mythical "center of the contiguous U.S." in Lebanon, Kansas.

It's a nice place to visit in the spring, and I have. Take a fried chicken picnic, and a blanket, and get all bucolic on your bad self.

A "daylight" flourescent bulb will generally give a spectrum of at least 3500° K, and some will do 4700° K, or even 5500°K, although these latter bulb seem awfully blue to me, and are harsh on Kodachrome. But edgeways is right in saying that combatting S.A.D. with artificial lighting is a matter of spectrum, lux (intensity) and duration to which you expose your retinas to wide spectrum light.

hm. im pretty certain it's always been west... which is probably weird but lemme explain.

growing up, our big horse barn, which was the most visible landmark on our property and could be seen for miles (it was on a hilltop) was due west of the house. so i learned to use it as an orientation guide.

and then... yea, i moved to the Front Range. meaning, the most visible landmark(s) are the high mountains of the continental divide - i mean from boulder they pretty much overwhelm the landscape. meaning i orient to them now. and they're (wait for it) to the west.

so... i dunno what that means. and i know dick about lighting, tho i do like my 2 big halogen torchieres. sorry.

Man Facing North...I think. I don't picture *myself* standing anywhere so much as a sort of mental Google Earth of where I am/am going.

I've been in the habit of thinking "which way is north?" to get myself oriented for so long that it's rare for me to do it consciously anymore. I wear a wrist compass along with my watch, too.

Wonder if any Ozzies, Kiwis or South Effricans orient south?

Somewhat (or quite a bit) OT, but I recently bought a big laminated wall map which is a fairly conventional depiction of the earth, Mercator projection -- except upside down. I can't begin to tell you how *weird* it is, much more so than I would've expected, to spend some time looking at this map, and realizing that there is no reason beyond convention to picture north as "up."

I picture myself standing on a map of Colorado facing north towards Wyoming, with the Rocky Mountains in the west to my left. This is how I learned to visualize directions when I was a kid -- I'm left-handed, and grew up in Colorado and Wyoming; the mountains were constantly visible as landmarks, so the two (mountains + left-hand side) must have just merged in my mind as the fundamental way to orient myself.

I had the same thought as mischief.