It’s not weird, is it,…

It's not weird, is it, to spend the first hour of your day weeding? Yesterday and today, here is my pattern: wake up @ 5, throw on some clothes, make tea, take it outside and weed before it gets hot. Oddly satisfying. Sometimes I sing a little, though not too loudly, as the dog-walkers and the people headed into work via the subway stop three blocks away wander past. Some people say hi. Others look at me like I'm a bit bizarre. Weeding at 5 a.m., yes, that's what I'm choosing to do today.

7:00 update: AWESOME discovery. I can think about my story (charcter, plot, etc.) while weeding. 5-6 a.m. just went from deeply satisfying (because apparently I get a lot of pleasure out of killing the little invading monsters; it's even better than killing orcs and ghouls and such in Warcraft) to SUPER productive.

Off to make a few notes so I'll remember the new plot / character details when I come back to writing after an hour of waking and dressing and feeding and dropping off the kids at preschool.

7:30 update: on Facebook, Sugi Ganeshananthan reminded me of this bit by L.M. Montgomery that says it so much better:

"This evening, just when I was in the middle of a story Aunt Elizabeth said she wanted me to weed the onion-bed. So I had to lay down my pen and go out to the kitchen garden. But one can weed onions and think wonderful things at the same time, glory be. It is one of the blessings that we don't always have to put our souls into what our hands may be doing, praise the gods -- for otherwise who would have any soul left? So I weeded the onion-bed and roamed the Milky Way in imagination." -- Emily of New Moon