This is my second winter back in Missouri after eleven years in Southern CA, where winter isn’t as wintery as it is here in the Midwest. Last year was brutal here, with ice and snow, a couple of snowstorms that bordered on blizzards, power outages and subzero temperatures. Parents who would be stuck inside for days at a time with rambunctious kids and marathon video game sessions flooded the grocery store before each of those storms, filling their grocery carts with several bottles of wine and a few of the harder stuff and cases of beer (which one was the chaser?), leaving the shelves in the alcohol aisle near empty.
This year, though, winter has been pretty mild. The sun is shining, but it is getting pretty cold again after a few days of near 60 degrees Fahrenheit. Temperatures dip below freezing at night, which is a good thing if you know anything about bugs. If we don’t have a “good freeze” or two over winter, the mosquito, tic, chigger, and flea populations rejoice. Those critters go forth and multiply as they would do normally, but the existing populations from the previous year are not killed off when there’s no freeze, effectively doubling the population of all those blood suckers. It makes for an awful summer. Have you ever had 60 mosquito bites and a sunburn at the same time? It makes scratching an exercise in masochism. You have to make some Faustian deal over which is worse: The itching or the pain from the burn.
Even in a mild winter such as this one, there is a sense of dormancy, of things lying in wait, resting, reserving, and refueling. This dormant energy lends itself to quiet activities, such as reading, writing a novel (or three, if your like me and can’t focus on one at a time), planning a garden, planning your spring break or your summer vacation, getting in touch with old friends and family members you’ve not seen in too long. While this is a good time to do these things, we don’t always get them accomplished. To think of a thing is not the same as doing that thing. To that end, I have made lists of things I want to accomplish, and each day as I write my daily to-do list I check to see if I am doing at least one of those things from my bigger lists. Sounds like too many lists, doesn’t it? Not really.
This is how I broke it down, a method I learned from reading Alan Lakein’s book “How To Get Control of Your Time and Your Life”:
Lifetime Goals List
Yearly Goals List (2012, for example)
Monthly Special Emphasis List
Weekly Goals List
The Lifetime Goals List is the inspiration for the other lists. My big goals are to make a living writing, to produce certain works I have in mind, to get my boys through college, and to travel the world.
My monthly Special Emphasis List actually has less to do with my Lifetime Goals and more to do with seasonal activities or short term goals. For instance, every month I like to decorate for that month’s holidays or the season, but I don’t always do it because it’s not written down somewhere and it gets away from me. However, when I do it, it keeps my house and yard tidy because I get into the nooks and crannies every month and move things around, take things down, etc., for a fun reason rather than for drudgery. It keeps me cheerful because the decor is never dull. Floral arrangements change with holidays and seasons, the wreath on the door can be swapped out, from winter to summer the curtains may even change to let in more light.
Always for the Month’s Special Emphasis List I add at least two family members that I wish to visit because too much time has passed. This has become important to me since I went to my mother’s funeral in April and realized how many people were there that I hadn’t seen in years, some in decades. I didn’t want the next time we saw each other to be at one of our own funerals. I resolved then and there to make the effort. There are also special, one-off projects; books I want to read (a combination of genre and classic novels); books I ought to read; special occasions and events; deadlines; things like that. This year my goal was to read a classic novel each month, so each month I write down which title I want to read so I won’t let that goal fall by the wayside.
My Weekly Goals List is taken from the other Lists, chipping away at the big stuff a little at a time, hoping to move the ball forward on my long-term goals. In this way, I can see which things I can realistically fit into one week. I still overdo it and end up carrying some things over, or just crossing some things off because they weren’t as important as I’d initially thought, but since using this method I have become far more effective and get much more accomplished.
The Daily List keeps me honest. It includes all the little nitty gritty things I am required to do in Life, but also time for writing, and I hold it religiously, even turning off the WiFi and the phone to avoid interruptions. There is time for reading each day (it’s still not enough!), and finally, some of those things from the Weekly List make it onto this Daily List.
I like the feeling of accomplishment that comes when I cross off an item from my to-do lists, especially from the larger, more long-term lists!
This week I will finish up the Alan Lakein book, “How to Control Your Time...” and hopefully I will be able to read Juliet Blackwell’s “Hexes and Hemlines”, my brain candy book for this week. I need to begin this month’s classic novel, “The Awakening” by Kate Chopin. The books I ought to read are writing related, about story structure, and writing mystery novels and romances.
It’s a lot to juggle, but I find it much easier to track with a binder to hold all my lists written on looseleaf paper and a desk calendar which I use to track my writing projects and deadlines, also known as an “editorial calendar”.
My favorite thing to do when it’s cold outside and all the plants look like they’ve died? Bake something. It’s so life-affirming, and cozy. Here’s the link to my new favorite banana bread recipe, complete with cinnamon crunch topping, from www.allrecipes.com: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/bates-banana-bread/detail.aspx. It’s called “Bates Banana Bread”, and it is awesome.
Enjoy :-)
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