On Hitting a Target, Exercise, and Stream of Consciousness
Note to readers from future Nick - this turned out to be a rough stream of consciousness blog post, but I’m happy with it, so I’m posting it without any edits or changes. A bit of a meta post that goes into exercise and my main reason for procrastination, as well as my tactics and reasons in combatting it. Day three of the challenge completed, woo!
I am in the midst of a challenge to write a minimum of five hundred words per day; with the range being roughly between five hundred and one thousand. Sitting down to write this, that number feels immense. Overwhelming, even. How can I ever possibly write five hundred words in one single sitting? Depending on the font, depending on the spacing, depending on the k e r n i n g, how much of a page it fills will be different, so I can’t count the pages.
Otherwise,
I’d just do this.
And count a page after a few dozen words, like a poem.
Funnily enough though, just that exposition and the few lines of playing around with the text and the spacing already took up a hundred words with some change. Now some thirty more.
It’s surprisingly easy to continue writing once you start. Getting the ball rolling is the biggest challenge.
Because picturing how cold the water’s going to be will make you avoid dipping your toe in it to actually check, let alone getting in.
It is a lesson that I have learnt many, many times over. On a small scale, thousands of times. On a large scale, hundreds. I used to be a big procrastinator, and it took a lot of effort to move away from procrastination and the habits that accompany it. It took a long time to figure out how to ‘reset’ and ‘realign’ myself once something is off or I’m not getting to work as I usually do. I’m kind of in the middle of one of those ruts now. The amount of unknowns and uncertains and waiting around that I have to do in the midst of a whirlwind of administrative work and regular work and studying is getting to me, and my productivity has plummeted, as well as my energy.
But I know that another underlying cause is the fact that I haven’t been able to exercise beyond my morning stretches for a week, due to a small skin treatment. Missing my regular workouts has been a painful reminder of just how much of a crucial part of my schedule they are. Routine exercise is one of the key aspects of maintaining my schedule and discipline. And most surprisingly? My energy. In the beginning, when I first began to train and work out in general, I was exhausted. But a few months in, and now several years in, I find myself not only looking forward to my workouts and structuring them, but feeling reenergised as soon as I complete them.
My rest days have consisted of extra yoga and stretching for the past months, and it’s strange not being able to do even that. All of this is, more than anything else, reassuring. It means that as I workout and as I prioritise that as a fundamental part of my routine, I am on the right path. The energy and ‘alignment’ that I feel as I balance out my life with exercise is—as I’m sure is the case for many of you as well—almost entirely unnoticeable until something trips up my routine and suddenly I’ve gone nearly a week without properly working out.
But I digress. And the word count? It’s way beyond five hundred. That seemingly insurmountable goal that I was so afraid of at the start is already fading away in the distance as I have more and more thoughts I want to get down onto the paper.
It goes back to the idea of needing the perfect setting, and things never turning out on paper (or on screen) as they do in your head. It’s important to have stream of consciousness writing sessions like this one in order to accept how things take shape. You then have the ability to mould that into rough structures and then edit and polish what you’ve made. You can create a rough outline or several draft versions, and plan and structure your writing rigidly. But sometimes, just “eyeballing it” is exactly what you need to get the creative juices flowing. And before you know it you’re already past a page and you’re still writing, with more things to say and write for the day that you want to cram in there. Isn’t that just awesome?
So all it takes is just taking that first step. It can be the heaviest, most difficult, most precarious, most anxiety-inducing step that you’ve ever had to take. But once you take it, you’ll find your other leg following the first. Then, you’re walking forward. At some points, you break into a light jog. You run. You sprint. You slow back down to a jog or a walk to get your heart rate back down. But you’re moving forward.
The time will pass no matter what. It’s scary taking that first step. I’m still afraid. But with a little push, a little help, and a lot of practice, it gets easier every time.
Look at that - over nine hundred words.
And all it took to start was just a sentence.
