Some Christmas Reading

Annie Spratt on Unsplash

 I am sure that two days before Christmas, you have nothing to do but sit down with some Christmas reading. It turns out, I have a Christmas essay and a Christmas adjacent short story among my publications for you to kick back with.

A Minimalist's Christmas at The Bigger Picture

The Mother Suite at Literary Mama

Also, if you happen to own a copy of My Life Among the Aliens, there's a chapter there called Santa is an Alien? that I've considered republishing somehow for Christmas.

Time Management Tuesday: No December Whining This Year

Over the years, I've done a lot of whining here about my difficulties dealing with the joy that is preparing for Christmas. I rather like working, at least a certain amount of it, and juggling it with gifting and decorating and extra cooking is a mini-ordeal for me, as it is for a large chunk of the Christmas-celebrating world.

Not so this year. Things are better and more restful. I think there are two reasons for that--my minimalist lifestyle and my Christmas sparkbook. 

Minimalism And Time

In 2018 I did a reading arc on New Minimalism: Decluttering and Design for Sustainable, Intentional Living by Cary Telander Fortin and Kyle Louise Quilici and how practicing minimalism can impact the time we have for work. And I began moving toward a minimalist lifestyle as far back as 2014 to try to deal with the chaos I seem to attract. This holiday season I've seen it paying off.

I hosted Thanksgiving this year, for the first time in many years. Usually hosting a holiday meal means three days of prep for me, between cleaning and cooking. But we were only expecting two adults and two children who eat very little, so how much work could that be, right? So on the Monday and Tuesday mornings of Thanksgiving week, I worked. On Tuesday evening, I panicked. Though no one was staying overnight, I needed to tidy up two bedrooms for children's play or in case someone went in them on top of the cooking that was left. How was I going to do all this?

Imagine my surprise when I saw that it took only a couple of minutes each to get those bedrooms presentable. Why? Because there wasn't much in them. We don't use spare bedrooms as junk rooms or for storage, because we don't keep junk to store. 

This was a huge eye-opener for me. That and the fact that this fall I've been able to use my laundry room for folding clothes and sewing without having to clean it first. Again, it's not filled with items we're storing. We don't have much to store. Seriously, I've never been able to use the laundry room for folding clothes. We've always had baskets of clean clothes stacked in the living room and bedroom. This is amazing.

December is going the same way. The house is decorated, but not with the extensive amount of Christmas junk I used to use, because I'm not interested in that any more. Extensive amounts of Christmas junk is depressing. The tree is up a week early. Okay, only the lights are on, but you noticed the part about a week early, right? There are small batches of cookie dough in the freezer (I do small-batch baking now, which is like minimalism but different) for baking later. I am getting into a new weekly elder visit routine. And still I'm actually working nearly ever weekday morning, or longer, and sometimes a little on the weekend. On a day I have to be away, I am sometimes able to squeeze a little work into the afternoon. I am even submitting short form work and had two pieces published this month. Also, I've had two rejections, which I mention to reinforce the point that I'm able to submit.

I will admit that some of the calm and sense of accomplishment I'm experiencing this month  is due to the pandemic. We are not having the two large family gatherings we did in the past, one or both of which I sometimes hosted. There will be two smaller gatherings, as well as a dessert meeting, on different days, so no one is racing from place to place. I'm not in charge of any of these things. I also shopped early because of the warnings about shortages. 

But, still, this is the calmest and most productive feeling December I can recall having, and a lot of it is due to the fact that the lack of  stuff in this house has cut some of the chaos. 

Sparkbooks And Time 

For those who observe Christmas, the most stressful part, after determining who is going where, is remembering what you've bought and for whom and holding on to receipts so items can be returned. This is particularly onerous if you're one of those people who shops early in the year. A lot of time is wasted looking for gifts in your home, trying to find the receipts, and, when you can't, trying to find a way to at least exchange gifts that are too large or small or just not right.

I began maintaining a Christmas sparkbook nearly ten years ago. I am now losing a lot less time to gift issues.

These days 'spark book' relates to some kind of data processing system. Or a book written by Nicholas Sparks.  But when I heard about 'sparkbooks' in an advertising supplement in a women's magazine, they were a sort of journal or scrapbook for keeping track of details relating to, well, in this specific case Christmas, though it seemed as if you could use the idea for anything. 

The Christmas sparkbook I created was in a traditional three-subject binder. One section was for decorating ideas, which I often forgot to look at. One section was for food ideas, which, again, I often forgot to look at. But the gift section? That I am glued to for the month of December. I may have a page for ideas for the next year, but I definitely have a chart keeping track of the people I'm buying for, what I'm getting, if I've purchased it, and often if it's arrived or if I've wrapped it.

And, best of all, at the beginning of this section there is the classic portfolio pocket for receipts. It took me a few years to remember to put everything in there, but I'm working it now.

Why Should We Care About Your Personal Life, Gail?

 

Because the line between our personal and work lives is very thin and very pliable. Most of us can't afford financially or professionally or psychologically to blow off a month of work for holidays. 

The best I can offer for writers who observe a labor-intensive holiday of any kind at any time of the year is to get your house in order. Get rid of as much as you can and write everything down.

Time Management Tuesday: A More Upbeat Christmas Time Post

I'm in the middle of putting together next month's Connecticut Children's Literature Calendar and a reader response post and need to be thinking about this year's recapitulation post. So today I'm reaching into the archives again for a Christmas time management post that is more helpful than some of the ones I turned out while feverish earlier this month. I was whining back in 2014, too, but in a more productive way.

I did manage to use some of these units of time last week to send out a submission. And yesterday I got maybe fifteen minutes of work done on another project. Allez, allez, allez.

The Unit System Lifeline During That Time Of The Year, December 16, 2014  

Two years ago, I wondered if the unit system would get me through the holidays. My concern was "Losing time to the holidays, in and of itself, is a problem. What also happens, though, is that we can damage our work habits while not working and lose any carry-over flow we might have been experiencing."  A week later I was reporting a major failure of will, self-discipline that had gone down in flames. Last year I wondered if sprinting and a new laptop would enable me to stay on task through the December holidays. It looks as if I never addressed how I did with this issue here at OC, probably because I was engulfed in a moderate health care crisis from the middle of December until the end of January.

So, two points:

• I have major problems dealing with the demands of end of the year holidays
• I'm still trying to deal with those problems with small units of work time again this year

My Major Problems With The End Of The Year Holidays

My control of my time is so tenuous that anything new that enters the playing field, like a holiday that requires hours and days and weeks of preparation, like two of them coming a month apart, is overwhelming. December/the Christmas season packs a double whammy, because in addition to being very time consuming, it involves an emotional toll. Christmas the secular event is supposed to be magic, whatever the hell that is. We're supposed to be creating magic. Yeah, we're talking a whole other level of time with the magic thing.

And we're supposed to be creating magic while we're maintaining a day job. Those of us who don't have traditional day jobs, who work for ourselves, in our homes, often have trouble controlling the boundary between home and work, anyway. It's all too easy to justify slipping over the border into work time to finally get started on cookies or get those gifts wrapped because cookies and gifts are magical. Magic is worth it, isn't it?

The Unit System

As the magic bleeds all over our days, sucking our work's life blood, small units of work time become more and more important. If we try to think in terms of a work week, we run the risk of hitting the What-the-Hell Effect. Oh, we don't have all week because of one holiday problem after another. What the Hell? We might as well forget about work then. The same is true of thinking in terms of a workday. At some points in December, we can't get many of those. So what the Hell? Why work at all?

But if you think in terms of forty-five, twenty, and even ten minute units of time, suddenly work options appear. Forty-five minutes at least a few times a week will work for editing a draft or maybe even progressing with  a new one. Twenty minute sprints each day can help keep you in a new project, even if you can't make a lot of forward movement with it. It can make a dent in blog posts or take care of some professional reading. Ten-minute sprints on a laptop set up in whatever room you're working magic in can allow you to knock off all kinds of work. 

So far, this is working for me. At least, it's working as far as work is concerned. I don't seem to be getting much magic done, though.

Hmm. I might use a tiny sprint this weekend to plan a rerun for next week's Time Management Tuesday post on the 23rd. On the 30th, I'll be doing a recapitulation post for my 2014.  

Time Management Tuesday: December Continues To Suck Up Time

My big work plan for this month is to make three submissions, two of which involve some revision. Two of these three submissions are ready to go, I just have to get my head around writing a kickass submission letter.

Where I've been living.

I've been putting that off, because I've been sick off and on for a week and a half. I've been on an antibiotic since Sunday, and that's making me sick, too.

Then there's that thing called Christmas, which is hanging over my head like death and taxes. I did very little holiday prep in November, you will recall, because I had committed myself to National Novel Writing Month. I thought that working intensely on that would make some kind of change in my self-discipline/will power/focus. Clearly, I'm going to go to my grave with that fantasy.

Yes, that is a basket of laundry under the tree

As a result of NaNoWriMo, sickness, and a major holiday coming together, I haven't done the gifting thing in any organized way. For instance, I have three unopened boxes of gifts I've ordered, and only a vague idea what's in them. I also have a Christmas tree that has been up since Saturday, but is only half trimmed. Oh, and I have only made six dozen of the ten dozen cupcakes I need for a gift. And none of them are frosted.

To get to the point, at last, I have gone off the time management rails. This kind of thing happens here routinely in December.

What Timely Thing Can I Do Now?

Well, mainly I think I need to just grit my teeth and put one foot in front of the other until the end of the month. But I happen to be reading The Upside of Stress by Kelly McGonigal, in which she starts from research that indicates that people who don't view stress negatively deal with it better than those who are stressed by the fact of being stressed. And this has made me think that some attitude adjustment for what's happening here at Chez Gauthier would be helpful.

1. Okay, I'm sick. And it's going on forever, and I'm never going to be better, and I had something similar in January, and I'm going to get this over and over again. Waily, waily, waily. We have people dying at Christmastime in this family. Not this year. Yet. But regularly. Stop your whining, Gail. We also have sickness here in December regularly. (Look at your Facebook wall. Everyone does.) I'm taking one for the team.
2. Christmas. First World problem. Be grateful.

Can I Do Something About Future December Misery?

Well, I thought so five years ago when I began the Time Management Tuesday feature. One of my first posts was The December Time Suck in which I listed a number of ways to control time in December. This year I did not make any use of the sparkbook described in that post. It might not have made a huge difference, but still.

One thing I'm thinking of doing differently in 2018 is to live the entire year with the expectation that December is going to be a disaster. I'm not talking just an attitude adjustment. I mean actually prepping for disaster.

• For example, having food ahead in the freezer was helpful during NaNoWriMo. (Not that I'm saying NaNoWriMo is a disaster.) I happened to have made a pot of soup just before I took a turn last weekend. That's been great. A fully stocked freezer for next year's December problems could make a difference in my life.
• Those people who insist on having their Christmas shopping done by the Fourth of July may be on to something. I won't actually do that because gift recipients' needs and interests change in six months and then there is the whole issue about returns. I'm just saying that I no longer think people who have to have their Christmas shopping done before Halloween items are in the stores are out of their minds.
• It's my year to do Christmas dinner. I'm kind of vague about what's happening with that. Seriously, that could have been planned months ago. It could have been planned last January. A job well planned is a job half done, my father always said. I wish this year's Christmas dinner was half done. 

I'm thinking of making some kind of work goal, preparing for the end of the year's rigors and disasters, so they'll have as little impact on my work life as possible.

Today, though, I'm going to grit my teeth and work on that third submission that needs some revision. And I will be grateful I have the opportunity to make those submissions. And I'll put up a couple more ornaments on the Christmas tree.  I'm also going to put one foot in front of the other and open those boxes in the living room. Then I'll order more because I am unlikely to get out of here to shop before Friday. And I will be grateful I can do that, too.

Hey, Wonder Woman climbed out of that trench and fought her way across No Man's Land. I'm just talking Christmas and some e-mail submissions.