Does the change of seasons affects others as it does me ... ?

This is an ongoing question: Each year for the past several years, I have lost energy in a major way as summer turns into fall and winter.  I live in the "North Country" region of New York State (north of the NYS Thruway, which runs from Albany through Utica, Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo.  I probably have 'seasonal affective disorder' (SAD) on top of the RA, but what is concerning me now is, that it seems to happen earlier every year (maybe that's the RA part).  A couple of years ago, I seemed to lose ALL of my energy on December 1st.  The next year, when I 'planned' for Dec 1st (i.e., tried not to plan anything too busy or stressful in December), it happened earlier, in November.  Last year, I planned for November, and it happened in mid-October.  And this year, to my dismay, it seems to be happening already.  I still work full-time, but when this energy drain occurs, I have to mostly keep my evenings clear and plan to be home and rest.  Even activities that I love and have done for years - I simply can't do it.  I need the down time to re-charge, or even just to "veg" (read: couch potato, share the evening with my cat watching the Discovery Health Channel and/or go to bed early more often.  To complicate matters, my husband (an audio engineer at a college music department) works many evenings and gets home later.  So it takes away from our time to catch up if I'm just not up to "staying up." 

     I did have a couple of surgeries last year (ankle tendon reconstruction in Feb and carpal tunnel release in June) which slowed me down and it has only been since mid-April this year that I felt I really got my energy back.  Plus, here in the North Country, spring (weather, not the calendar) is a rare commodity, often not appearing until almost summer!  Summers lately have been cool and rainy much of the time.  So it may be a conjunction of causes.  But I thought I would pose the question out of curiosity and share my own reactions.