100 Day Creative Challenge Day 72: Prescription
The immunologist held out his hands, palms facing upwards. ‘You can choose between these two prescriptions.’
He’d just told me I had an auto-immune condition. It was the reason I’d felt run-down and sluggish for about ten years. Finally, I had a label I could give to how I felt when exhaustion overcame me, my brain fogged and I just had to go to bed.
The doctor’s hands were empty, but he cupped them as if they held something — options.
‘On the one hand you can take a handful of tablets including sleeping pills, anti-depressants, anti-inflammatories and so on.’
I hate taking pills and the image of choking on them as I tried to wash them down made my throat tighten and I swallowed.
‘Or,’ he said, bouncing the second hand like a tennis player about to serve, ‘you can do forty minutes of exercise a day. Hard cardio exercise preferably.’
I already exercised regularly, but didn’t run hard or push myself too much. I’m more of a plodder than a sprinter. As I looked at his cupped hands, his two prescriptions, it took me only a few seconds before I made my decision.
‘I’ll do the exercise.’
‘Nine out of ten people choose the pills and stay on the couch,’ he said and wrote his prescription on a piece of notepaper. I wish I’d kept that piece of paper, but I’ve never forgotten his prescription.
The lesson I’ve learnt in the years since then is to just keep moving. It’s a Catch 22. I get tired and I don’t feel like exercising. If I give in and sit on the couch, I’m still tired.
However, if I exercise, I get more energy and I’m more able to cope with whatever life throws at me.
In December I gave myself the prescription of writing the 100 Day Challenge. I faced a second surgery and it had only been a month since a previous one. The recovery was to be six-weeks and I knew there was a possibility I would not feel like writing. The prescription to write was similar to the one to exercise. I had to keep moving.
So far I’ve kept it up for 72 days. It’s been a discipline that has kept my anaesthetic-fogged brain working. Writing begets writing. I also did final edits on my next YA book and did some planning for another project I’m working on.
Too often in the past I’ve written in spurts and starts. The longer I write, the more I realise that for the health of my writing, I need to write every day. I need to prescribe a word count. Just like the immunologist prescribed forty minutes of cardio a day, I prescribe myself a word goal every day.
Habits are born out of repetition and longevity. The habit of writing is one that will see you produce work more regularly.
..here’s the editor’s prescription, writer: 1000 words daily until next checkup. Rob Bignell
