I have done hardly any writing over the last month. Despite waking up every day and thinking, I really should get some writing done today nearly every day in July was spent nowhere near my current manuscript.
I guess there’s just something about these summer months. After a childhood of growing up in American public schools and then working in those schools for most of my adult life, both my brain and my body seem trained to reject almost any challenging cognitive tasks. And that’s not to say that I didn’t work a lot, because I actually accomplished a lot last month. When it comes to getting a contractor set up to make improvements to the house and getting my own physical and mental well-being back on track… I made a ton of progress.
Not to mention, I flew more trips last month and spent more hours pouring Coke in the aisle at 36,000 feet than I have in any month prior.
There just wasn’t a lot of sitting still long enough to get writing done.
One of the biggest reasons might be that, for the first time in a long time, I was finally honest with myself last month about changes that I would need to make to alter my current health trajectory. I’ve mostly accepted the fact that I turned 50 this year and that there’s going to be no going back from that number, but along with that acceptance came taking a fairly clear-eyed view of where I stand with regard to nutrition and exercise in particular.
In short, I had developed a litany of aches and pains and general malaise, and those inconveniences had escalated to the point where I could no longer push them aside or ignore them. And since I was unwilling to accept my doctor’s decree that it was simply “a normal part of aging. “I decided it was time to make some real changes and hope that, perhaps, my doctor was wrong.
So I also will chalk up my weeks and weeks of absolutely no productive writing getting done to the fact that I was completely overhauling my typical diet and hauling myself to the gym on a more regularish basis.
I’m not gonna lie, it has been incredibly hard to give up bread, pasta, package food, and added sugars. For weeks, it felt like my brain could hardly handle a cohesive grocery list, never mind the creative gymnastics of writing a novel.
So I gave myself a break as I muscled through my sugar detox. All I had was the hope that within a few weeks I would turn the corner, my brain and body would finally give up the ghost of sugar, and I could move into the fall with a healthier body, healthier habits, and a renewed sense of focus and drive that wasn’t propped up on the hourly by a handful of Spicy Cheez-Its.
So it’s been about four weeks now, and I can honestly say, hand to heart, that I’m so relieved I made the switch. I’ve noticed so many changes. I sleep better, my digestion feels both calm and normal, and for the first time in years, I can get up out of bed in the morning without walking like 120 year-old woman with a broken back and two hobbled feet.
While my doctor never mentioned it, I’m fairly certain I had problems with inflammation driven largely by the way I had been eating for years.
Now, please don’t think I’m over here feeling completely fixed. I am certainly no poster child for consistently making healthy choices. But, I will say I am more excited about moving into the rest of my 50s with both a better plan and a running start on the sustainable habits aligned with my intention to try and enjoy these next life chapters as much as possible.
