After a really strong start yesterday (5199 words!), I woke up excited to see if I could hit the goal 1667 words today. I admit that in the very back of my mind I doubted myself a bit. I even worried that I'd fall back immediately on the head start I gave myself yesterday and use up my "word bank". I have a good deal of travel coming up this month for conference-speaking and I know I will need to tap those extra words to keep on track, I worry about using them up on laziness or just because they're there.
I woke at 4:30a, started writing around 4:40a after throwing on a cozy sweater and filling my water jar. I stopped around 6:05a to prepare (shower/dress/make coffee) for a 6:30a work call.

My kids are home from school today, so they're sleeping in beyond their normal 7a wake time, so I feel really lucky in the small break outside the normal daily routine of getting everyone ready for school. I feel like I'm able to ease into this challenge a bit more gracefully than I might if things were as bustling as normal.

I get the question A LOT: "Why 4:30a?"
Last year after a bunch of back-to-back travel to the East Coast - to Ireland - to East Coast, my body clock seemed to adjust on its own, waking automatically at 4:30a every day (occasionally 10-20 minutes earlier.) I decided to roll with it and make use of that time. When Daylight Savings Time went into effect, 4:30a became mostly 5:30a. So again, I rolled with it. Now we're back at 4:30, so far so good. It becomes tricky when I travel, but I tend to take it as it comes and do the best I can to maintain a rhythm.

I do these early morning hours because I know if I don't the day will slip away and before I know it'll be bedtime, and I'll be exhausted. I absolutely have days, especially in the Fall and Winter months, when the air outside my covers is cold and intimidating, days when my eyes and my brain want nothing more than 15 more minutes of sleep. Right now I'm surfing the wave of adrenaline and sheer delight for being a part of a challenge that has dangled just beyond my grasp for so many years. Right now I'm owning my time and filling it with something that makes me smile so hard inside I feel like my outer shell might explode right off my skeleton.

In my 1 hr 25-minute time window today, I wrote 1977 words today. I feel AMAZING!