We are home from visiting my family in MN. The holidays are mostly over, as we don’t tend to do a lot for New Years, except to “write the year in.” I’m mostly recovered from the strep. My lymph nodes are still swollen and sore to the touch, but most of the pain in my throat is gone. I’m tired, but no where near as much as I have been. This morning, I even had thoughts about the novel! I’m going to try to write some fiction after I finish this blog.

It’s difficult to be sick over the holidays. I missed time with my family. There really wasn’t anything I could do about it, however. I needed to rest and to sleep.

Now is the dangerous time for me. Because I am feeling better, I could easily push and make myself sick again. I will be careful though, and will spend a lot of the day sitting again, though I miss standing and writing.

Today, tomorrow, this week – I will plan out first quarter’s tasks for me on the publishing side of things. I’m really looking forward to spending an evening doing that. I won’t do it all in one go – there will be several days of adding and subtracting items while I figure out my schedule.

Though I tried to be realistic in terms of what I could and couldn’t do, I should have planned better for December. I did very little publishing work while I was in MN. I had foolishly thought that I’d have time (or desire) to do more.

I have a workshop at the end of January, which means realistically only three weeks in which I can work for that month. I will be recovering in February, which means only three weeks then. March is wide open, and I’ll do what I can.

What I won’t do is expect to “catch up” in March. Instead, I need to plan better so that there isn’t waterfall from one month to the next.

As for food, it’s really nice to have my salads again. Plus bone broth this morning. Made a new batch last night. Right around Thanksgiving the store had turkey necks for sale. Those really make good bone broth. So tasty!

I’ve been adjusting some of the vitamins/supplements that I take every day. Haven’t landed on a good stack yet. What I switched to isn’t working however. With the diet that I have, while I get a tremendous amount of most vitamins and minerals, I do not get enough calcium. I can tell when a source of calcium works or doesn’t pretty quickly through my nails. The new one is not working. So I’m switching to something else, seeing if that does the trick.

And I think that’s it. Need to go sit down to write the fiction. We still have the tree up. I was so happy to have an artificial tree this year, as when we came back from traveling I didn’t have to worry about a live tree and watering it, being dismayed at how many needles it had dropped, etc. I’m thinking I’ll take it down sometime after the New Year. In my house growing up we always had to take the tree down before New Years as my parents had a New Year’s Day party. Growing up, I never went to any New Year’s Eve parties because I would be on my feet all day the following day and exhausted.

What sort of planning are you doing? Does your old way of planning out things work, or do you need a new method?