Margaret's Column

I don’t make New Year’s resolutions-at least not the way most people use that term. I don’t vow to lose weight (don’t really need to) or get more exercise (get plenty already). But the first week of the New Year is a good time to begin things I’ve been thinking about anyway.

Part of this is the combination of the weather and post -Christmas doldrums. January in Southern Oregon tends to be cold and foggy, with intermittent rain and snow. And all the bright lights and festive decorations are put away for another year. With no more holidays to look forward too, it’s pretty dreary. Setting goals and beginning new projects raises the energy level. If you feel gloomy and depressed, just clean out your closets-you’ll feel better.

Of course, this may also be the reason that so many don’t keep their resolutions; the cold gloom all around them just screams ‘what’s the point’? Perhaps we should move New Year’s to the spring equinox. Warmer weather, the return of growing things, baseball-people might have more incentive. Just a suggestion.

Part of it too, I suppose, is that I’m getting older; time no longer seems limitless, the way it did twenty or even fifteen years ago. I may seem a bit young to be facing down my mortality, but I have reached an age where I realize that every day counts, and that only elderly people call me a kid (little kids call me ‘ma’am).

So here’s what I hope to accomplish this year, in no particular order.

1. Get the second volume of the Lorrondon Cycle out. I actually have people who are waiting for it. Not many, but every little bit of encouragement tastes like Prime Rib. I also hope to finish the third book. The draft is about to go to my editor, a.k.a. Mom.

2. Organize my reading list. Sometimes I finish a book and then flail for a couple of days, deciding what to read next. All the while I feel I’m wasting time. So, when I finish Peter Matthiessen’s Shadow Country, I think I’ll start Dan Simmons’s Endymion, which has been sitting on my shelf for about eighteen months. I’ve already sworn to buy no more books until February. I’m drowning in them already.

3. Clean out my den. This room is full of boxes that are full of things I can probably do without, like issues of Entertainment Weekly from 2004. It’s one of my favorite magazines, but still!

4. Get better on the chores. Sometimes I let laundry sit in the basket for two days before I finally put it away. That’s just laziness.

Hmm. Not an overly ambitious list, but it should keep me busy through the winter. Perhaps in the spring I’ll revisit this, see where I am, and what more needs to be done.