The Winter Doldrums

Welcome to the Romance Writers Weekly blog hop. Glad you could join us. Don’t forget to hop to the next post by clicking the link at the bottom.

This week we are talking about how we combat the winter doldrums if we get them. In fact, I am about as far from a winter girl as they make. The prospect

of winter even spoils the beauty of the fall season up here in New England for me. I don’t get the seasonal depression that many suffer with, but I become a grumpy hermit from about October to some time in May.

I hate being cold. That is my main issue with winter. The snow is beautiful, but to those of us who don’t ski or snowmobile or whatever winter people do in the snow what I see are bad roads, icy sidewalks, higher heating bills, etc.

I was the mom in the ski lodge that had her laptop but was hidden under a pile of stuff that every kid, kids I didn’t even know left we me, because I wasn’t going anywhere until the ski day was over. Other mothers and fathers would suit up and join the kids. Not me. I used that time to write or read a book. Mind you the lodge was never warm enough for me, so I had extra socks with me, I even brought blankets to wrap up in.

What do I do to get me through winter, you might ask? I spend a lot of time

planning my one vacation every year to a warm location. It helps me realize there will be an end to it all. I also make sure that I have my desk situated in a room with a bank of windows to let in as much sunlight as possible. New England can be so dark and dreary in the winter because we are all hunkered down in our houses trying to keep the heat in. I am a sun baby and when I don’t have the chance to soak it up, I get very drained.

Other things I do are make sure I keep up with my exercise routine. My body would like to just do what bears do and curl up, sleeping through the long harsh winter. When I don’t exercise it makes me even more tired and grumpy. This may sound counter productive to exercise, but I also use winter to cook all those yummy comfort foods from my youth. We heat our house with a wood stove and even though we are in the 21 century, growing up I used to spend time at my great aunt and uncle’s farm where my aunt cooked on a wood cook stove. So, I do a lot of cooking on our wood stove in the

winter. I can put a pot of something on the stove and let it simmer away all day without worrying about the gas bill, because of having to use it. I love cooking in the crock pot during the week and a lot of crock pot meals are hearty winter fare.

And lastly, this is when my love of writing and reading come into play. When I wake up and open my manuscript to summer in England, I can forget the weather outside my own window and frolic in the flowers and roses of summer.

What do you do to stay out of the doldrums during the winter months? I’d love to know.

Next up we have Leslie Hatchtel on her blog

You can also check out all of Leslie’s book on Amazon here.