A Writing Hiatus

If I ever manage to live a balanced life I will probably abruptly drop dead of shock.

I often wish I was someone else.  Someone for whom things came easily.  Someone who juggled multiple needs and responsibilities with ease.  Someone who could flit their brain from one thing to the next and not feel a great strain in having to switch gears.

Instead, I am a person who must give my full concentration to whatever I am working on and only on that thing.  Slow.  Methodical.  Focused.

And it makes my life hell.

So here I am on the cusp of a brand new start in life--having worked my butt off the last 3 months, lost 34 pounds with 15 more to go, finally feeling energy for the first time in years.

But fitness at 46 takes work.  A LOT of work.  In my 20's & even well into my 30's I was fit and trim.  I could get away with eating terrible food.  Not so any more.  Diet is crucial, and so is getting more exercise than just walking.  I have eaten more vegetables in the last 3 months then in the last 46 years combined.  Not kidding.

Fitness at 46 comes with a HUGE price tag.  I have to retrain my brain as well as my body.  Learn about what foods are low on the glycemic index, what combinations of foods to eat to best fuel my body.  Since I no longer have a trainer, I have to learn all the different types of weight training exercises and how to fuse those into a full body workout.  How to vary the workouts to keep from getting bored and my muscles from getting complacent.  And those things don't come naturally to me.  It's like trying to understand algebra.  It makes my head hurt.

The price tag is time.  Lots and lots of it.  Learning something new literally consumes your life day and night.

That's largely a good thing.  It's good to lose weight.  Good to get fit.  I'm finally able to do a few push ups--for the first time in my LIFE.  That is way cool.  It has inspired me to set the goal of hiking The National Trail Trek next January--an annual 15 or so mile hike they do at South Mountain every year.  A hike I haven't done since probably 2001.  I have a few other physical goals in mind as well.

Despite all that good, I nevertheless want to cry.  Writing is crowded out of my life. 

Again. 

If it would do any good, I would throw myself on the floor and have a childish tantrum. Scream and wail with the best of them.

Never has the cliche "you can't have your cake and eat it too" been so profoundly real to me.  So for the next two months, I'm completely setting aside my writing to focus on fitness.  I want to see what I can achieve physically by September.  To work, to dream, to shoot for what is possible.

Posts will appear here but not weekly, as I get my body's house in order.

Then, I hope, I can return to my writing and be able to focus on it the way I want to.  To do the plotting, the research, and the writing.  All those time-consuming things that make up the writing life.

Have a blessed summer!