Brain Work vs. Body Work

This is how I’ve started labeling the tasks on my daily/weekly “to do” lists.

The body work—yard work, mostly, or work I otherwise do outside, such as refinishing the deck or trying (finally) to finish renovating the garage—never goes away, of course, but it’s somehow easier to ignore because it’s outside. It’s been five weeks since we got Mosley, the adorable (not so) little guy below, which means I can’t go a day without stepping into the back yard anymore. He needs to go out, of course, but he also needs to play, which means tossing the rubber ball or flipping the Frisbee—which he often leaps and catches, amazingly enough. Going to the gym is body work, too. Literally. And I need to go more often. Don’t we all? There’s also the basement, which needs some attention.

The brain work has taken over in September, without fail, every single year of my professional life—responding to student essays and stories, editing fiction (by this writer or that) for Freight Stories, reading book-length manuscripts for Engine Books, answering interview questions and interviewing other writers, giving writer-friends advice about marketing their first books or publishing contracts, responding to an editor’s suggested cuts and changes to a short craft essay, sharing some kind of advice for the blog of a journal that published one of my stories a few years ago, planning the details of two classes I’m guest-teaching for a colleague next week, and so on. A good deal of brain work takes place in the summers, too, but as the weather turns colder, the indoor activities dominate my days. 

Teaching is both. Brain work, yes, because engaging students, challenging them, pushing them beyond the boundaries of their expectations, finding ways to have each individual click into recognition and understanding —this all takes brain work. But it’s body work, too, because of the performance. Standing on your feet all day is hard work. Ask a restaurant server. And talking all day wears a dude out, you know? I’m never so exhausted as I am at the end of a long teaching day. I also never feel so accomplished.

Andre Dubus used to go for a run after a day of writing. His son recounts one such run at the beginning of Townie, his memoir published last year. So while I’ve got a long day of brain work ahead of me today, I need to remember to get outside, to move around, to tire the body as well as the brain. Maybe that’s why I decided to wear this gray, Rocky-ish sweatshirt today.

Rocky runs up the stairs from Antonio Gomis on Vimeo.