I love this time period between the end of one year and the beginning of a new one, when my new calendar is still empty and the old one is full of memories. I comb through one and look forward to filling up the new one.

Here’s a list of some of my favorite calendars. Calendars make great gifts, for you and for your friends.

Jim Maynard’s Pocket Astrologer

If I could buy only one calendar a year, this would be the one. It contains all the calendrical information I need for the year: the dates of major Christian, Jewish and other festivals, plus moon signs, moon void of course, eclipses (and where to view them), the best meteor showers of the year, planetary transits (including Mercury retrograde), and much more, all for my time zone (Pacific; there’s also one for Eastern time). I’m not sure why I love this calendar so much. Other calendars — Llewellyn’s astrological calendars and the WeMoon almanac — provide the same information. Maybe it’s the compact size. Maybe it’s because Jim Maynard was the first person to teach me about that mysterious time interval called “moon void of course” (a transition time when the moon is “in between” signs). Maybe it’s because so much is information is packed into such a small package. You get everything I mentioned above plus a blank horoscope wheel for writing in your own chart, a visual map of the planetary motions, explanations of the qualities of each zodiac sign and planet, an article on planting by the moon and much more. Orrder one at this web site.

Planner Pad

In a totally different realm, the realm of scheduling, I would be lost without my Planner Pad which is like the control panel for my complicated, multi-faceted life. Unlike traditional planners in which one tends to write mainly the dates of external obligations (appointments, etc.), the Planner Pad system encourages you to think of what you want to do in different areas of your life and then assign them time in your schedule. (I imagine this is similar to the Covey system which I’ve never used, though I have incorporated many insights from his books into my schedule, like putting first things first (my spiritual life, then my writing) in both my schedule and my day.) I’m going to adapt some of the Planner Pad ideas into my Natural Planner. I just found a great post online from Diane who loves using a Planner Pad for organizing as much as I do and she breaks down the process in great detail. If you are interested, you might want to read her post. For years I used the 8-1/2 by 11 size, but the year I ordered the smaller size, I had a lot more time (not so many lines to fill up with tasks), so I’m going back to the smaller size in 2012. To order go to the web site.

Wall Calendars

Besides my handy astrological guide and my planning system, I always like to keep a beautiful wall calendar on my wall. Both Pomegranate and Amber Lotus offer many beautiful choices. I think you can use calendars as a focal point for your dreams, which is why I sometimes give friends calendars as New Year Gifts, calendars that feature places they want to travel (Greece, Italy, etc. ) or activities they love (yoga, writing, knitting, etc.).  One year I chose a William Morris floral design calendar which helped inspire my flower essays.

When I wrote a version of this article for my newsletter, a reader wrote to let me know about the Literary Calligraphy calendar, which looks beautiful and would be a great gift for someone who loves words. For the past few years, I’ve been enjoying my own French Republican calendar. The lovely photo of snow was taken by Karen Karlovich and illustrates the month of December, or Nivose (Snowy).

Weekly Journals or Engagement Calendars

I often use beautiful calendars as journals. I have one I kept the year my daughter was turning two and it’s full of hilarious stories about her adventures and a detailed record of her vocabulary acquisition. We both still enjoy reading it.  I also have a Book of Days that came illustrated with Japanese seasonal paintings which I use as a phenological journal, where I track the seasonal changes in my life, noting the first whiff of sweet box in January, the first ripe raspberries in my garden in June, the first time the radiator comes on in my apartment in September. I put each entry under the appropriate day and write the year in parentheses, so that over time the book has become a palimpsest of over a decade in my neighborhood. I can say with certainty, “the lilacs are blooming earlier this year.”

I heart the inspiration for the Ecological Calendar, which is available both as a wall calendar and as an engagement calendar. It’s beautifully designed and meant to help you notice the natural rhythms of the year. In the engagement calendar, each weekly page shows celestial events, the ratio of sun to darkness, natural seasonal events, the tides and a preview of what’s to come. The right hand page offers space to write in your commitments or comments. It begins on Winter Solstice, as every calendar should. I love it that the creators have named the months and the days fanciful, seasonal names, just like the creators of the French Revolutionary calendar. Winter is Celeste, Sleet and Bluster. December 24 is MoonGlow, December 25 SnowLine, December 26 Ice Floe and December 27 Frozen Lake. But these names point out one problem of seasonal calendars: they don’t fit all regions. There are no frozen lakes in Seattle, and I’d be surprised if the emphasis on snow in winter works for residents of Florida or Southern California.

Pam from New York state asked me what I thought about the Sacred Journey Daily Journal which is available from Pomegranate. I actually haven’t seen a copy of this engagement calendar but it looks like it would be wonderful. There’s a grid for each month and also a pair of pages for coming up with gratitudes, affirmations, opportunities and goals. It looks like it offers room for considering goals as well as tasks like a more typical engagement calendar.

Almanacs

For the past four years, I’ve been enjoying the treasure trove of seasonal information collected by Bill Felker who publishes Poor Will’s Almanack. Felker started paying attention to the weather patterns where he lives in Yellow Springs, Ohio after his wife gave me a gift of a barometer, and that expanded into a passionate devotion to all indications of seasonal time. He predicts weather patterns, lists flowering plants for every day of year, provides a pollen count and a SAD index (hours of sunlight available), describes what’s happening in the night sky, and writes a perceptive and elegant essay to begin each month. You can order the 2012 edition at his web site.

Creative Calendars

One year when I was really struggling to find balance in my life, I made a collage calendar showing the year as a circle with different slices of pictures for each month. December and January were time off months, months for dreams and visions, which I depicted with a starry sky background. February, April, July and October were months I wanted to focus on my teaching, indicated by fields of lavender. March, June, September and November were months I planned to focus on my writing (I used the image of a page of handwriting). May was my month for sending out my work (I figured if I could get it all done in one month of the year, I’d be relieved of the pressure I always feel to market my work). I indicated this month with flowers and a hummingbird drinking from them. August was a vacation month (camels in the desert). This calendar proved to be enormously useful to me since every time I was feeling frantic, I simply looked at it to figure out my priorities.

Twyla Tharp describes using a circular calendar in her book The Creative Habit. She says she keeps track of multiple creative projects by drawing circles within circles on a piece of paper with the deadlines scrawled inside the borders. Although each circle is unique it rubs up against or enfolds other circles. She writes; “If I follow my circles and match things up with my calendar, the progression begins to make sense.”

Havi Brooks of The Fluent Self has just developed her own calendar (in a more conventional format). I like to think she was inspired by the French Republican Calendar I sent her last year. But Havi is never conventional and so she has created a calendar in which you get to write in your own names for the months and the moons.

It’s easy to make your own calendar. Many convenience stores, like the Walgreens in my neighborhood, offer templates you can fill in with your own photos. I’ve used their template for the last few years to make a calendar featuring photos of my daughter’s Chihuahua, Pepe (who is also the hero of my novel, Dial C for Chihahua). We give them as presents to Pepe’s fans (he has many).

A few years ago, after finishing a big genealogy project on my mother’s family, the Wittaks of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, I made a calendar that featured significant family dates on the date grids and displayed photo collages of the ancestors of the family and the houses they lived in. I sent a copy to all of the relatives who had helped me with my research. It made a great gift.

As you can see I love calendars! I’d love to hear about the calendars you love.

This concept came to me courtesy of Rebecca Ross of the Composed Domain. I took her clutter class at North Seattle Community College. It was a great class and helped me shift the mountain of stuff under which I am buried (you can get a glimpse of what I’m facing in this photo of my living room).

Many of the techniques Rebecca taught were ones I had learned before, like the sequence of sort, purge, contain and maintain, a maxim which I first picked up from Julie Morgenstern. It matches the way I normally clean which felt validating.

Rebecca also encouraged us to honor our own way of organizing. Two years ago, I rearranged all my file folders and I’ve been confused ever since. I am going to restore them back to their original order in my next wave of cleaning.

But this is not a blog about clutter in space but about clutter in time. Rebecca gave us a list of possible kinds of clutter, many of which I recognized.

Masquerade clutter is something that is valuable but you don’t use it, like exercise equipment.

Bestowed clutter is something someone gave you that you will never use, like a book you will never read, or an item of clothing you will never wear.

Memorabilia is anything you are keeping because it reminds you of a person or event that was precious. Rebecca suggested we deal with this by preserving the memory, for instance in a photo or piece of writing, but letting go of the item.

Bus stop clutter is simply clutter that is on its way somewhere else, for instance, items you are going to return or take to the Goodwill.

“Dust me décor” clutter is the name Rebecca gives to tchotckes, all those decorative items that line your shelves and cover your windowsills. For me, this category mostly consists of rocks which I pick up every time I go some place.

Someday clutter consists of items that you will do someday, like magazines you will read someday or, in my case, the shattered remnants of favorite dishes I will make into a mosaic someday, or the scraps from old clothes that I will turn into a quilt someday.

I amused myself after the class by trying to come up with comparable kinds of clutter in time. I couldn’t come up with exact correlations but I did notice a few kinds of clutter in time.

No Longer Meaningful Time Clutter: This is an activity that was once meaningful but now I’m only doing it because it’s a habit. I was able to get rid of several instances of this kind of clutter.

No Longer Prime Time Clutter: Some activities that I used to do regularly at certain times of the day, like writing my blog entries in the evening, had not been done at that time for over two years, yet I kept writing them into my schedule for that time. Clearing this kind of clutter simply means noticing what I was really doing and accepting it. If I really want to write the blog entries, I might have to find a different time.

Brain Wasting Time Clutter: TV is the prime example of this. I watch it because it’s on and it catches my attention and then it’s hard to turn off. So I put myself on a TV diet: one hour a night is all I’m allowed (some exemptions are given for Project Runway and So You Think You Can Dance).  Then I turn the TV off. Although at first, the house feels weirdly quiet, I soon get totally absorbed in my writing or my computer research.

Doing Someone Else’s Work Time Clutter: This would be time you spend doing something that really belongs to someone else. In my house, this would be an uneven distribution of chores, which it really is time to sit down and list and then parcel out in a more fair way.

Unrealistic Expectations Time Clutter: This is sort of like Someday Clutter in that I think I can really do 12 hours of work in 4 hours. I’ve had some luck correcting this kind of time clutter by actually estimating how long I think it will take to do all the things on my to-do list (for instance, last Monday I had on my list 1) make breakfast 2) sort out the trust 3) take all the files to the storage place 4) edit the Pepe novel 5) sort out the books 6) finish the Waverly Fitzgerald web site. I figured out how much time I thought it would take me to do each one, then worked through them in order of priority and actually got 5 out of the 6 done.

Too Many Choices Time Clutter: I’m always working on a number of different projects and this can become its own kind of clutter, as at any given moment, I could choose to do one of 20 things on my to-do list. To deal with this issue, I limited myself to six ongoing projects (writing a mystery novel, working on my non-fiction book on nature in the city, taking a photography class, teaching a writing class, updating Living in Season and uncluttering the house). I assign only one thing to do each week on each project and give each one its own day. It’s been weird but gratifying to experience the sensation of having completed a task and having nothing else to do that day. Wow!

Someday is Right Now: I’ve also decided to move some things off my Someday list to my Right Now list so I signed up for the photography class I’ve been wanting to take for three years. It will mean my Fall is a bit crowded but I don’t wait any longer for some day.

I’d love to hear about your Time Clutter and how you deal with it.

Rubin noticed one day that although she was reasonably happy with her life—and her husband, her two young daughters, her work as a writer—she always had a nagging feeling she should be happier. So she created the Happiness Project. She assigned themes to each month (of course, this made me happy, because this is what I did in My Year in Flowers book). Her twelve themes for the year were:

She spent each month reading about the topic and applying certain principles she distilled from her reading to her own life, for example, during the month of July (Money) she worked with these concepts: Indulge in a Modest Splurge, Buy Needful Things, Spend Out, and Give Something Up.

Naturally I was enchanted by this idea. I love putting things in boxes (hence my fascination with planners) and, in fact, I was contemplating posting a monthly theme on my web site. So I decided to create my own Happiness Project and these are the themes I chose (carefully chosen to be seasonal, naturally):

I’m still tinkering with these. I stole some from Rubin. Others are my theme words for 2011. I’m already sad I missed some (Play!) but they’ll come around again next year (my Happiness Year apparently starts in July).

Right now I’m having a great time figuring out what to do during the month of Creativity. My principles so far are Borrow Creativity (a trip to a museum or attending a concert or maybe just looking at an artist’s site each day). Go on an Artist Date (I’m planning a trip to my local art supply store; maybe I can count a perfume shop as another one). Try Something New: I want to try a different artistic medium each week, but am having a hard time figuring out what besides my two favorites (outside of writing): photography and collage. Attend Art Events: Luckily I am already attending the opening of the Long Shot photo exhibit at Photo Center Northwest on July 23 (I’ll have a photo in the exhibit! As will everyone who participated).  I also found some great events sponsored by the Henry Art Gallery: a workshop on art books (maybe I’ll be inspired to make one) and a talk on the future of book stores by one of the people who is reshaping publishing, Matthew Stadler.

My assignment is already reshaping the way I approach my life/time. I spent a couple of happy hours this morning looking at various visual artist’s sites and following a chain of links to all sorts of cool projects that parallel my own, like the Long Walk,  a project by artist Susan Robb and this article on Hamish Fulton, who makes art resulting from the experience of individual walks, which also led me to an article on How To Get Lost in a City, about Amira Hanafi, who produces art from walks she takes. I have no idea what a situationist derive is but I think I should learn. (Actually I just found out by going to Wikipedia: it means taking a drifting (unplanned) walk through a city, noticing ambiance and what appeals.) Come to think of it, this will be my fourth art form: a walk. Which is really the subject of My Year in Flowers book so it all wraps around in a neat circle, like the seasons.

Photos by Waverly Fitzgerald

The most amazing celebrations of this holiday have evolved in Spain and Italy where people create carpets of flowers over which the procession can pass. I wrote about this in 2007 in my blog when I discovered some fabulous flower art in my neighborhood.

A few months ago, I happened upon a form of flower art that is even more simple but in some ways more poignant. I was on my way to the University of Washington when I spotted this flower, poised on top of a concrete-filled pipe, obviously carefully placed there. I was so surprised and moved, I took a photo. Then a few steps further on, I found another camellia tucked into the corner of a re-paving project.

So I challenge you to create some flower art of your own on Corpus Christi. Find a flower, and place it where someone else will find and enjoy it.

I was thinking about tempo recently because I was walking behind two guys who were walking really slowly.  I was, of course, trying to get past them but they were hogging the sidewalk, so I decided to start walking at their pace. And it was really interesting because I found that by slowing down to their tempo, it actually changed my attitude. I felt much more relaxed and sort of curious about the world.

This is an experiment I think I will repeat, although there is one warning. If you are walking behind someone, don’t be too obvious about copying their walk or they will get nervous.

That’s my friend, Art, walking down the steps at a museum we visited in San Francisco. It turns out I don’t take many photos of people walking.

I have a lot of friends who are angry drivers. I hate riding with them. They yell at other drivers as they drive. “What do you think you are doing?” Or make impatient noises indicating their disgust. Or tailgate slow drivers to try to make them uncomfortable. Or complain about how poorly everyone else is driving.

I used to feel a bit superior because I don’t do this. But the other day as I was driving home, I realized how judgmental I am. I may not be yelling or tsking or tail-gating but I’m still thinking those things. “Could you move a littler faster?” “What do you think you’re doing?” “You really think I’m going to let you cut into this lane just because you were too impatient to wait with the rest of us?”

I decided to try driving with loving-kindness. If I drove with loving-kindness, when I’m behind a slow driver, I would simply slow down, keep a respectful distance and think, “Hmm, maybe I need to be reminded to slow down,” or “Maybe they are looking for an address. I hope they find it.” If I drove with loving kindness, when someone tries to sneak into my lane, I’d think, “I bet they didn’t know they had to be in this lane,” and let them in. If I drove with loving-kindness and someone else tail-gated me, I’d say, “Oh, do you want to go by? I’ll move aside.” When I came to an intersection where it was confusing as to who should go first, I would not decide when to go by what is right (“I was here first”) or logic “(Well, he’s waiting for a pedestrian, so I should go.”) No, I would take my turn in the way I assume would make everyone else the happiest.

I have tried to put this into action. I don’t drive that often (maybe once or twice a week) so I haven’t had much practice. I have to tell you it is extremely difficult (at least for me) but it turns driving into a totally different experience.

That cute car is my three year old Ford Focus: Sunny.

I usually associate it with an unusually warm and sunny winter day but on Monday it was snowing in Seattle: soft, clumpy flakes drifting down from the sky on and off all day long, leaving a frosting of white on the grass and car windows.

Still when I left work that afternoon, I passed through a zone of piercing sweet scent that I immediately recognized as sweet box (sarcococcus humilis, I believe, though I am a little confused by my sarococcus species).

The scent is hard to describe but almost everyone describes it as piercing. For instance, I found this blog post by Barbara Wilde who gardens in Paris and found it wafting out of Parc Monceau. She describes it as powerful and piercingly sweet.

Another common description, and one I have used in the past,  is the sensation of being stopped in your tracks, as described by Sue Taylor in an article at Dave’s Garden. She compares the scent to honey.

This year my first thought was of violets. Mary Robson at Muck About describes it as vanilla and honey. She brings in branches in November and “forces’ them to bloom indoors.

I have tried this myself as a way to extend this delicious scent but the scent really loses its charm after a few hours in a warm house and becomes cloying. I prefer that elusive, piercing, evasive scent that surprises me on a winter day with its promise of spring.

I’m making a commitment to blog more frequently in 2010 and I plan to blog each week about a book I am currently reading. I could post these reviews on Library Thing or Good Reads, the sites my friends are using to keep track of books they’ve read and are reading, and I probably will post there as well.

But I don’t want to review every book I read. I hate writing bad reviews (I was a book reviewer for a short time and hated it: both reading and writing about bad books) and I didn’t finish a lot of the books I started last year.  I follow famous librarian Nancy Pearl’s rule. She says that up to the age of 50, you should read 50 pages of any book before deciding if it is worthwhile or not. After the age of 50, you can subtract one year for every year you age, so that by the time you are 90 you only have to read 10 pages. Life is too short to waste time reading bad books!

Most of the books on my Top Ten list this year were non-fiction. Only two novelists made it onto my list. That got me thinking. I realized I go to novels for entertainment and story-telling and these days, I get a lot of those desires satisfied by watching TV. Yes, I am about to come out of the closet about my plebian tastes!

When I want short stories featuring a character with a problem, some conflict and a resolution, I turn to court TV and get two or three of these stories in an hour. If I want to experience a longer journey–about a character on a quest, struggling against obstacles, finding allies and mentors, learning lessons and eventually achieving a goal–I watch reality TV shows, like Survivor or America’s Next Top Model or Top Chef. And finally if I want a really good dramatic show, something with the density of a Dickens novel with complex characters, multiple plot lines and layers of theme, I can watch dramatic series like Mad Men or True Blood or Big Love. So maybe next year I will have to write a top ten list of my favorite TV shows. I didn’t even keep track of them this year.

Most of the books on my top ten list are books that changed the way I live or the way I think. I also notice that three out of ten have the word “home” in the title. Not sure about the significance of that but it was a year when I stayed home a lot.

Here’s my list. I’ll do a countdown starting with #10 and working my way up to #1, in the tradition of all Top Ten Lists, over the next ten weeks. By then I should have read enough good books to keep me posting reviews every week all year long.

Fox Woman by Kij Johnson

The Chet and Bernie mysteries by Spencer Quinn: Dog Gone It, Thereby Hangs a Tale and To Catch a Thief

Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer

Goat Song: A Seasonal Life, A Short History of Herding and the Art of Making Cheese by Brad Kessler

The Thoughtful Dresser: The Art of Adornment, the Pleasures of Shopping and Why Clothes Matter by Linda Grant

Reading the Mountains of Home by John Elder

Let’s Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship by Gail Caldwell

Circumference of Home: One’s Man Yearlong Quest for a Radically Local Life by Kurt Hoelting

Naming Nature: The Clash Between Instinct and Science by Carol Kaesuk Yoon

Wesley the Owl: The Remarkable Love Story of an Owl and His Girl by Stacey O’Brien