Lately I’ve been on a quest to overcome my dread of the cold. When I spent the summer in Alaska in 2010, I wrote about resigning myself to the fact that I’m a wimp in the cold. I’m not ashamed: I get cold easily and have to bundle up a bit more than the average person in Washington.

But I’m not going to let the cold stop me. (I will, however, let snowy and icy roads stop me.) I cannot let the four or five months of temperatures consistently below or around 40 degrees keep me from leaving my house everyday. As a full-time writer who works out of a home office, I start to go a bit crazy when I can’t get out for breaks to exercise or talk to people, to see something besides the four walls of my apartment. In Texas you can hunker down and not leave the house during the coldest days of the year — because they last for about four days. In Washington, though, I’ve come to terms with the realities of wearing wool underwear and socks, boots with fuzzy lining, scarves, and hats every day until Easter. I invested in cold weather running tights, so freezing temps don’t keep me from putting in a few miles a week. Long wool tights, socks that come up to my knees, and warm boots allow me to wear dresses and skirts year-round, something I never imagined possible. That one little consolation is helping me endure this winter — I love skirts and got used to wearing them year-round with flip-flops in tropical Yunnan, and I feel distinctly unfeminine if I have to wear jeans for months on end. I’m making the best of it and improvising with cold gear so that I can keep dressing and looking like a girl.

I’m trying not to let circumstances stop me in other areas, as well. At this point in life I don’t have the home furnishings or space necessary to have big groups of people over for dinner or to hang out. Having an open house is important to me, and I want my home to be a place where I can entertain, serve meals, show hospitality to people who might need a place to stay. Right now, I only have enough space around the table for six, and two of those people will need to sit on a patio chair or bar stool. Depending on what we’re eating, I don’t have enough place settings to serve those six. But I’m making do. I’ve determined not to be embarrassed about the little I have and to invite friends over now — not wait until I have a larger kitchen and table and plenty of bowls and plates for a big dinner party. I’m not going to let my limitations stop me. If I don’t invite folks over for dinner now, what makes me think I won’t find another excuse to prevent it in two years?

Writing is another example. It’s easy to wake up each morning and look at all the things I need to get done for my bill-paying freelance jobs, or the chores to be done around the house, and think to myself, “I wish I could be completely care-free and have all the time in the world to write each day.” But that kind of care-free scenario is the stuff of dreams. I can arrange my life so that I have as much writing time as possible, but ultimately I have to just sit down and do the writing, stop looking at all the obstacles, get down to business. I can’t let any number of hesitations or fears or distractions keep me from doing the tasks that will lead to my end goal: completed essays and stories and books.

And now I ask, what about you? What are some areas where you catch yourself saying, “One day when the stars are perfectly aligned, I would love to start doing this or that.” Could you take a small step toward preparing for those possibilities, not letting the present circumstances stop you from enjoying today what you desire for the future?