Finding Balance: How to Stay Healthy and Creative During the Hectic Holiday Season

I had a complete knee replacement in September. By December, OK I was mobile enough to be dangerous but not quite mobile enough to actually do Christmas the way I normally would. That meant I had to organize everything, direct everything, and delegate everything—while my brain was simultaneously writing, plotting, and refusing to take a holiday.

The characters don't care that it's Christmas. They just kept showing up.

So there I was: animals everywhere, grandkids arriving in waves, a house that needed to look festive, gifts that needed to appear from somewhere, and a story in my head that kept interrupting all of it with plot developments I absolutely could not ignore. I kept a notes app open on my phone the entire month of December. Some of those notes make complete sense. Some of them are clearly from 2 am and will require translation.

What got me through it was something I've started calling the daily reset. Every morning I look at what's actually in front of me that day — not the whole list, just today — and I decide what matters most right now. Some days that was making sure Christmas happened. Some days that was getting two hours of writing in before anyone woke up. Some days it was just surviving until bedtime with my knee intact and my sanity approximately where I left it.

The holidays change as you get older. They stop being about what you want and start being about making it good for everyone else. I actually don't mind that. What I've learned is that taking care of my creative self isn't separate from taking care of everyone else — it's part of it. A writer who never writes gets very difficult to be around.

We got Christmas done. The book kept moving. The knee survived.

That counts as a win. 🐉