Oct. 25, 2001
From April to September I had enjoyed perfect health. I was wide eyed and bushy tailed. I giggled, I smiled, I contemplated, I was quiet, I was content, I was happy – all this despite small bouts of worry, confusion and frustration. Living as I wanted, as a writer, made me feel true to who I was and somehow, this kept me well.
But the last few I had begun to feel quite ill – almost like I had back in April before I realised I needed to quit my job. I was tired, rundown, and my throat was sore. I coughed, I sneezed, I ached. I was mentally fogged in. I was slow. I was doing less than I had as a full time writer yet I had less energy.
What had changed was that a couple of weeks ago, I had taken on a job two days a week at a local spa. I had done this because it was a place I went to and they asked me if I’d like to work the front. I thought this might be a good idea to get me out of the house as I was going a bit stir crazy and also a good way to get a massage. Yet, it turned out for me to be a bad decision; I didn’t enjoy it, the atmosphere was bitchy, the work wasn’t anything remotely interesting and the free massages necer came.
The days I’d go to that job people would tell me that I didn’t look well – my eyes showed it. My heart, felt it. Maybe I was coming down with something, I thought. The problem is I never got full blown sick, I just had these small symptoms everywhere.
So only after a couple of weeks, I quit. Since then, something quite amazing has happened.
I’ve been feeling fantastic. This despite nothing but cold weather, hard rain, and terribly foggy nights. I’ve felt alive and energetic. I’ve been on a whirlwind of creative work, bundling ideas, reading, playing, learning, and basically just doing things that pertain to my passion of writing and art.
My diet hadn’t changed, I hadn’t taken any medicine, the weather certainly wasn’t in my favour, but I was no longer sick. I was no longer in the mode of coming down with something.
I didn’t really make the connection until I read a passage in the book, If you want to Write from 1938. In it, the author Brenda Ueland wrote this about her friend:
I know of a very great woman who makes her living by teaching violin lessons in the daytime… Then from midnight until five o’clock in the morning, she is happy because she can work on her book… The book is her life work….
…”One day she came to me and had a very bad cold. “Oh, lie down quick! I exclaimed, “and I will get you some hot lemonade and put a shawl over yourself.”
She opened her eyes wide at me, and said almost with horror in her voice.
“Oh, that is no way to treat a cold!… No, I slumped a little yesterday and so I caught it. But I worked all night and it is much, much better now.”
The point of that passage is that when you put your energy into what you love to do, your body reacts, sort of a mind over matter type of thing. You are happy, you are content, the energy feeds your body, you heal. When you do something you don’t like to do, you have those aches and pains that have no name and are only cured by stopping the work that you hate.
Although I have been frustrated and almost angry with myself for taking up temporary office job work (despite the fact I had good intentions. 1. To keep me around others and keep me social 2. To help me save for an ibook for my writing) it really taught me a lesson. That is, that I am nothing more than a writer and I can’t pretend to be anything else, no matter how small the scale of pretending might seem. And that if I do what I love to do, I am alive and there is no exception whatsoever.
Writing might bring me confusion, fear, a sense of being overwhelmed, perhaps disappointment but it never makes me ill, it never makes me sad and it never makes me feel less than. It just makes me feel real.