Sharon Lee, Writer

Archive for September 21st, 2012

So, I’m still down here at Temp Headquarters.  One of my goals was to walk 5 miles a day — that comes down to those magic 10,000 steps fitness folk like to talk about.  I’ve made that much…some days.  Some days I’ve made more, some less — say, an average of 4 miles a day, since I’ve been living someplace with sidewalks and a downtown, and, yes, the Atlantic Ocean, all to hand.

I have noticed that, I do think better when I can walk; that walking helps me work out knotty problems in the work-in-progress in a way that just staring at the screen until the beads of blood form on my forehead just doesn’t.

I’ve also noticed that walking four or five miles a day. . .takes time.  At the pace I walk, about two hours.  Maybe two-and-a-half.  It’s not that I begrudge the time — after all, not only does it help me think, but walking’s good for me, physically — but it is time, there are a limited number of hours in the day, and adding in two hours of something means that two hours of something else needs to be eliminated.

Also, I worry, most sincerely, that I won’t be able to keep up my four mile/day habit, once I return to the Cat Farm,.  Log trucks, hunters, drivers texting while blaring down the road at 60+ mph, and similar perils of the natural world make walking perilous in the immediate vicinity, and getting in a car to drive someplace to walk seems like too much effort.

Well.

One of my other goals was to go home with most of a book and a good, solid idea for another in hand.  I’ve been writing 2,000 words/day, which is a pretty good rate. If I can keep it up through the end of my stay, I’ll have 3/5ths of Carousel Sun completed.  That’s nothing to sneeze at, certainly.

In the meantime, I miss Steve, and the cats,  at the same time I’m a little blue to realize that my working vacation will be over in only 12 more days.

…and that’s the news that’s fit to print, from Temp Headquarter.