Each year, December comes like the relief at the end of a long exhale. I don’t give myself the entire month off, though I wish I could. Instead, I’m careful to schedule as little as possible so that I can rest and relax at the end of the year, and as I plan for what comes next.
I still have my monthly column for Sky & Telescope, and my eight-times-yearly newsletter goes out to subscribers close to the solstice. This year, I have also moved up my novel production schedule by a month, so this week I have begun my initial read-through and note-taking on the messy draft of Poacher’s Peril (Haunted Coast book 6, for those keeping track), which will publish in October 2026. I first-drafted this one just a few months after major surgery, and while I was still recovering from Covid. My assumptions that this manuscript will require a bit more work to make cohesive or even comprehensible are so far proving out.
This is also a time for practical imagining. I like to think about the activities and pursuits I might like to try in the new year, and so I set aside time for brainstorming, list-making, and calendaring. I was doing quite of bit of this here this afternoon when I got impatient with myself for getting tired and losing focus. I had to remind myself that today is only December 2! I don’t have to address every problem or schedule every solution today. I have made a better-than-anticipated start, and that is enough for now.
So after making sure I had another block of time scheduled with my particular planning tasks in the calendar notes (TickTick has been working quite well for me), I closed my eyes and let myself do nothing more than breathe for a minute or two. I picked up my hardbound copy of Katherine May’s Wintering, my traditional December re-read, and drifted through a few sections of this reassuring memoir about struggle and self-repair. I ensured that I was keeping hydrated. I pet the cat and the dog. It is only December 2nd, I repeated. I must pace myself. I have time.