Hedges and Workthink

I spent much of Today thrashing the hedges. It took some time, because I wanted to give them a proper thrasing, and at eight to ten feet tall, they were much bigger than me. And they were bristling with that badly contained rebellion so common to feral shrubs.  My allies, the hedge trimmer (mortal enemy of all things hedgy) and a number of other sharp edged tools, helped me out a great deal, but the whole process was pretty laborious and consequently took forever. The redeeming feature of these circumstances was that I had plenty of time to think.

Here is an example:

How am I going to get these stupid things to look level? The ground is like a bloody sine function. Hey, ducklings. The pond is very green. I need to write a blog post sometime. I could write about ducklings. No, writing about work is no good. Too boring. But Dad said that one can make a good story out of ANYTHING... even though I argued at the time, it kind of makes a little bit of sense, possibly...


Okay, I could tie a string to that post and then to the telephone pole, and measure about 7 feet on each one. Whoa, sparrow. And then - 'nother sparrow - try not to hack through the line. 


... RRRGH! #$*%@ string! Why is it so thin? Okay, what am I doing? I have all this time to think. I should write a poem right now. In my head. Then I can have something to post. What comes to mind? Uh...


...plants?




As of now, I call this workthink: the kind of thinking that one does when one is engaged in labor which fails to capture the majority of one's attention. I think most people that work alone for long periods of time experience it. And it's pretty valuable, if you use it right. The above bit is impure workthink; cutting the hedges required a bit too much of my working memory to allow a poem to form, or a useful idea for my story, but pure workthink is golden. It's a tiny bit like getting paid to write. (Woot!) Even if it's all written in my head.

Therefore, it is my privilege to inform everyone that Sooner or Later, I'll be painting fences, and the number of writerly thoughts in my brainbox should increase dramatically. Stay tuned!