I had forgotten that bodies that don’t move tend to fall apart, especially older bodies. For the last couple of nights, I’ve been waking up with shooting pains in my hip and thigh. The culprit? Writing, of course.
Since the start of my summer vacation three weeks ago, I’ve been writing, reading about writing, and participating in online writing trainings almost non-stop, only taking the occasional break to eat, sleep, and shower.
My body finally rebelled by sending painful signals at three o’clock in the morning. So today, I dutifully put my writing aside and looked for something my out-of-shape body could do without too much strenuous effort.
I suddenly remembered I hadn’t used my soccer ball yet this year. Actually, it technically belongs to my son, but when he moved out, I refused to… All right, let’s just say that being the caring mom that I am, I’m looking after it for him until he’s all settled in. He’s only been gone for a couple of years after all. So, back to my original story, ever since I was a kid, I’ve loved kicking soccer balls in the backyard. At first I’d try to set records for how long I could keep the ball up in the air. As I grew older, I discovered it was a wonderful way of releasing stress and finding solutions to pesky problems. Later on, when I began writing, it become my go-to activity for relieving writer’s block.
Soon after setting the ball in motion, I was quickly reminded of this unblocking side effect. My mind naturally drifted towards various writing tasks, one of them being that I really needed to make time to create a new blog post. My poor fans were probably starting to worry at my prolonged silence. Then, totally out of the blue, I found myself writing the perfect blog post in my head. The problem, of course, was that I was supposed to be exercising. I couldn’t stop barely minutes after starting just to put my musings down on paper, could I? The thought of another painful night helped me keep the ball in the air.
As I kicked away, I allowed the blog post to compose itself flawlessly in my mind. It was a thing of pure beauty, a true work of art, enough to make anyone weep with awe and joy. Unfortunately, it evaporated before I could do anything about it. I’m afraid you are now left with this poor attempt at reconstructing what would most certainly have been the best piece of writing ever recorded.
On the positive side, you can still benefit from my great wisdom: don’t become so obsessed with your writing that you forget to take care of your body. After all, in order to share your words with the world you will need some sort of physical assistance.
Now go give some love to that amazing bod of yours so the rest of us can keep being utterly blown away by your magnificent awesomeness for years to come.
