Lately my Facebook feed seems to be full of recommended articles about how January is blah, the Monday of months, something to be slogged through. But I like January. It feels fresh – and not just because of the chilly temperatures and newly fallen snow everywhere. It always feels to me like a time for rolling up my sleeves, starting new projects, thinking about what I want to do this year and how I’m going to make it happen.

Progress so far: lots of chocolate eaten. Sigh.

Still, I have confidence that I’m going to have a big reset and a flood of energy any moment now. The December break was delightful – I made a decision to do less, much less, for Christmas, and it was great. So much time for doing puzzles and eating cookies! I thought I might use the extra time saved in December to do more work, or perhaps more writing, or to finish the novel I’ve been reading for like, three months, but no, mostly I just puttered around. Hooray for puttering!

So it’s been harder than usual to ramp up the activity machine – oh man, was it ever hard to get out of bed on Monday – but things are happening, a little slower than usual, but they are happening. Work is getting back on track, writing will hopefully soon be back on track, and if I can actually get a day when I don’t need to go to the grocery store (suddenly everyone is starving all the time, which I guess is a good thing, but sheesh, do I have to get myself an apartment in the back of the Superstore?), then maybe I’ll get around to cleaning up around here.

One thing I wanted to mention about the holiday, because I forget every time, is how much I appreciate the bathroom reading at my mom’s house. We go down to visit both sets of grandparents every Christmas and my mother still lives in the same house I grew up in, a house with one full bathroom and a teeny powder room in the basement. Four daughters in that family, kids. If you missed your bathroom slot – either in the morning or at night – you were out of luck.

My older sister lives with my mom and I think she doesn’t think I notice, but whenever we are coming to visit she curates the reading in the downstairs powder room. It’s an overflow bathroom for emergencies and putting on makeup, mostly, so visitors are not as time-pressured, and thus there’s a little magazine rack there. Every time we visit the titles have been changed, and I know she puts thought into it – there will be a comic strip book, usually For Better or For Worse; something in the true crime genre, short tales of horror; a few YA titles for the kids; and maybe a magazine or two about celebrities or the royal family. Often there’s a quick-read action or mystery novel that I’ve never heard of.

I usually end up spending more time in the bathroom than is appropriate.

But it’s one of the little things that make Christmas visiting feel like an actual vacation.

And now – time to put the bathroom reading aside, make an epic To Do list, and get cracking. 2017 – it’s on.