I’m not big on making New Year’s Resolutions. First because if there’s one thing everyone knows about New Year’s Resolutions, it’s they’re a joke. I hate breaking promises, even to myself. Second because I think it’s silly to wait until January 1 to make resolutions. If there’s something in your life you should change, change it now!

But this year, for whatever reason, I ended up with three:

1. Wash dishes within a day of dirtying them. Dishes are my least favorite chore because they always need to be done, and without growing science projects in the sink I must do them promptly. Also, I have very little counter space in which to accumulate them. #1 downfall of this apartment = no dishwasher, in case you were wondering.

2. Write every day. It’s how I wrote my first (terrible) novel when I was fifteen, and it’s how I wrote the novel that landed me my agent, and it’s how I wrote Starting from Here. Even if it’s just a couple of notebook pages or an hour of revisions, write.

This past fall, especially as holiday season began, I fell out of the habit. It’s very easy to go from writing every day to writing almost every day, and from there it’s even easier to write most days and then some days, and pretty soon you’re lucky if you sit down once a week.

So, I’ve been reclaiming my writing time. The biggest step was to start setting my alarm for 6:30 a.m. I’m much better at daily writing in the spring and summer, because my eyelids flip open of their own accord at 5:30. In the fall and winter, I’m more inclined to roll out of bed when the sun seeps into my bedroom at 7:30. The flip side of getting up at 6:30 is that I need to make sure I’m in bed, falling asleep, at 10:30 sharp. No more staying up watching those last twenty minutes of Stephen Fry in America or Dollhouse. They must wait.

3. Moisturize.

(Was that anticlimactic?)

There are other habits I’d like to sustain throughout 2012: go to the dog beach at least once a week with Saffy, get back into crochet and other crafty activities, eat less spaghetti. But for now, these are the three promises I’m willing to make.