The Joy of Exercising…

When I was growing up, exercise was something everyone else did.

As I grew older, I did appreciate the need to stretch my muscles, and I even tried it a few times. It was so boring, I didn’t keep it up.

Even when I gained a few pounds, I couldn’t summon much enthusiasm. I had all the good intentions in the world, just not the will to make them work.

I have always been disgustingly fit and strong. Even when life started to assail me on a regular basis, my strength prevailed.

All of this came grinding to a halt earlier this year, when my strength began to ebb away. Every day I grew weaker, until my body stopped working. Paralysed from the waist down due to an inflamed nerve in my spine, I ended up trapped in my tiny office, a prisoner for the foreseeable future.

They didn’t know how to help me. Too old for surgery, but regular exercise might get me moving again. Might?

For months, exercise became my friend, and painfully slowly, I began to get stronger. I’m not quite there yet, but I can stagger around a bit now.

Back to the point of this post.

Most things in life involve exercise to make them work properly, and that includes writing. I have come to realise that everything I love to do and feel confident about has involved regular exercise. Every time I write a post or a new chapter for a book, this is an exercise. It must be, because I am getting better with these too.

Every book I have ever written has needed an incredible amount of exercise.

Our brains thrive on being stretched, and everything we want to do involves regular activity to make perfect…