Living with intensity - in November?

This time of year has always felt like the start of an ancient hibernation to me. As the light goes, and the clocks change, my inner caveman starts to stay indoors and live off the fat. There are seven more weeks before the sun swings round again and with the hoopla of Christmas near enough to smell, all the talk is of how to step neatly though the compulsory festive period when you don't really feel festive.

No doubt this feeling of approaching the bottom of a cycle is what inspired our ancestors to celebrate the turning of the year with feasting and general merriment. (I used to be very amused by worthy folk telling me that we needed to return to the "real" Christian meaning of Christmas, when in fact the real original meaning is a communal midwinter blues-defying, gut-busting knees-up.)

To add to the mix, the doomsayers are telling us we'll all be forced to live on less for the next two years or so, and the entire scientific community is telling us that this is a Good Thing as we try to save the planet. None of which answers my question - how do you live with intensity in November?  Or February, for that matter.

Probably the simplest and best advice I have heard is simply to change something. Anything. Make a conscious, purposeful, healthy change to your current daily round, for a fixed period. For example:

• Give up chocolate or alchohol till Christmas day
• Walk to the station specifically because it's raining
• Get a rescue pet
• Fast from TV during the week
• Visit people at your local old peoples' home
• Join your local theatre group and get involved in this year's pantomime
• Make sure that you get really hungry at least once every day before you eat
• Write a poem in ten minutes
• Spend the last twenty minutes of the day outdoors
• Commit a random act of kindness to a complete stranger

Should be enough to be going on with...Any more ideas?