This one goes out to my dad who said, “Sounds like there’s a blog post in that,” during our dinner conversation last Sunday.

Last year I had the best of intentions. I finished up grad school in August and fully intended to have my manuscript agent-ready by the end of the year. 2012 was going to be the year of agent searching. Of course as anyone who’s ever revised can probably tell you, the more you do, the more you realize there is yet to do. But that is neither here nor there, because when the days got longer and darker and colder, I surrendered to my inclination to hibernate, and I don’t think I wrote again until April.

Yes, I had some good excuses: round 1 of gum surgery, a death in the family, a trip to Hogwarts, interviews for a new job, starting the new job, traveling for the new job…

But the point is this: I can feel it coming. School buses are back on the roads and the days are getting shorter. It’s already dark too early in the evening, and it’s already dark when I wake up for work. It’s still hot as heck most afternoons, but I already want to come home from work, climb into my PJs, and hibernate on the couch until spring. And it’s not even autumn yet.

So I’m putting a plan in motion to keep the wintertime blues at bay. Call it my new-semester resolutions, if you will. Also, my progress will give me something to blog about.

1. Enroll in a yoga class one night a week. I hate to exercise, and I never do it. And I’m lousy at yoga videos because I don’t know if I’m doing them right. Since I have adamantium rods in my back (what, you didn’t know I’m part Wolverjean?) it seems prudent to get some instruction. And, bonus, if I’m paying for it, I’ll actually go.
2. Go to bed earlier. I don’t think I need to explain the fact that I ALWAYS get too little sleep. Even on the weekends–no more staying up until 1 or 2 AM doing nothing. I’m going to bed close to my weeknight bedtime so that I can actually get stuff done on Saturday and fall asleep on Sunday.
3. Get up earlier. We are routinely pressed for time in the morning. Partly because I keep getting up later and later. In the winter it will be worse because you have more layers of clothes to wear and someone has to remember to defrost the car. I thought about getting up early to exercise, but I know that won’t happen. I also know that I only have a 30 minute window to work with because I refuse to acknowledge an hour of the day that begins with 4. I plan to use the extra time to straighten up around the place. Oddly enough, while exercise will not get me out of bed, for some reason cleaning tends to work pretty well. I’m even going to start making the bed again. Because a tidy house does a LOT to chase away the winter blues.
4. Quick healthy recipes. I’m head-over-heels in love with Cooking Light’s 20 minute recipes. They’re all online, and so far they have been pretty quick and very tasty. The bacon mac ‘n cheese was nothing short of fabulous! Something new, and the promise of something fast, because I’m just not going to try to deal with long and complicated this winter.
5. Crockpot weekends. Because the most tasty crockpot meals are pretty long and involve pre-cooking, they will be reserved for weekends. And I’m going to start early and freeze stuff so that we will have lots of options.
6. Winterize the house. Get my ducks in a row. Make things cozy. Married 2 years, we still don’t have curtains up in the bedroom. (We have blinds, just no curtains.) The hall closet is a disaster area. (Things literally fall on you when you are looking for first aid supplies.) So I’ve a few things to organize, give the place a good scrub, paint the front door, and when it gets cold we’ll be snug as a bug AND tidy.
7. Sunshine. I often take an afternoon walk at work, but once it’s bitterly cold this is hard to do. So this year I have to go out of my way. I have to MAKE it happen. Even if it means not walking, just finding a sunny spot out of the wind and standing there. But cats have it right: daily sunshine is a must. (And so is afternoon exercise, in the sun or out of it.)
8. Plants. Husband and I do not have green thumbs. We have killed a lot of plants together and apart. But I’m willing to try again, because I think if we manage to keep a few house plants going this winter it will do a lot for the feng shui. What is more anti-winter than living plants? Maybe if we name them they won’t die… we managed to keep our nephew’s fish Cookie alive when we pet sat.

All that leaves is the writing. Obviously that’s one of the most important parts. But the beauty of my plan (I hope) is that with a few minutes to straighten up in the morning, and getting more sleep and exercise, I actually think I might have the energy and the time and the inclination to keep going with this revision. It’s all obvious stuff, sure, but it’s things you can forget. Things that can get lost in a slippery-slope type of way when all you want to do is curl up on the couch and watch How I Met Your Mother reruns and shotgun TimTams.

It helps that my husband and I mostly watch the same shows, which means that we will be watching most of them by DVR on the weekends because of his school schedule. More time to write!

I’ve given up setting a deadline for when it will be done, though. That just makes me disappointed when it’s not. Right now it needs to be the best that it can be, and I don’t know how long that will take. It can’t be rushed. It will take how long it takes. Instead of setting a deadline, I’m going to plan to get back to where I was this summer: writing every day.

Writing because I would rather write than do anything else.