Writing is bad for your health.

Really.

I hadn’t realised quite how detrimental it can be  until I came back to it after a break.

People can ask me where I work, what I do and I answer in a sort of distracted way – oh I’m in administration, work from home, we have our own company blah blah blah.

It is pretty blah sort of stuff too because administration – necessary as it is – is not where my heart lies.

If the same person were to ask me what I was passionate about (why don’t more people ask those sorts of questions??) then they might see a person transform in front of their eyes. Because what I’m passionate about (among at least two dozen other things) is writing and I LOVE IT.

Which is why I had to switch off my writing head earlier this year and just stay the hell away from it for awhile. 

Writing is addictive. It is like living with another person inside you that just wants to talk all the time. All the time – except its riveting stuff – to me anyway. 

Plus this person thinks that everything is of great importance so they send you off to write it down. 

And then they never stop dictating – so you don’t stop writing and some days – if you are particularly self indulgent – you can lift your head at sunset and realise that another day has passed and you haven’t got a hell of a lot else done.

So I had to set boundaries which seems at the moment (and with a great deal of discipline) to be working.

I’m only allowed to write for 1000 words a day on my growing book. That’s it. 

Okay I overshot the runway by 150 words today but in my defence I didn’t realise in time to pull up and there seemed no sense in deleting them after they were down so…

So I’m still working on the discipline thing.

I was reading on another blog (which I also have to limit) this afternoon about the health risks of being blogger. The post caught my eye because I had just been thinking along the same lines.

You can take a look at the article from Mostly blogging here 

In short, apparently blogging has many health risks (who knew? One would think sitting at a desk as very risk averse behaviour) not so.

Becoming overweight can be a problem due to sitting on ones posterior far too much and grazing whilst not being overly aware of what you are eating.

Lack of sunlight – Vitamin D!

A lack of hydration

Social isolation.

I scoffed.

Not me.

Except that it was me. That was me when I first began this blog and was spending waaaaay to much time writing on it (or rather editing and refining posts). 

Sure a few made it in time to be posted each day but there were a great many more that I spent time on that never got posted.

Which added up to a lot of time sitting on my bum and writing. So the article does make a lot of sense and I can add another side effect of too much writing in there – a frustrated dog. 

My dog needs a lot of exercise and is a great match for me energy wise – when I’m exercising but when I’m not (because I’m writing) there is a significant amount of morning and afternoon whining at the door.

Which isn’t fair.

And I love my dog.

So.

Reading that post last thing this afternoon was a timely reality check given that I have once again taken up writing not only on this blog but also on my book plus contributing two short stories a week for my writers group. 

Which is adding up to a lot of time spent sitting down particularly when I add in the rest of my “what I do” workload.

So my thoughts on how to stay healthy (there are more in the article) are to get outside.

And.

Balance.

The key to this wonderful writing thing is balance.

That’s why my motorbike, my hikes and adventures and trips away are so important. 

It’s why getting up early and going for a run or walk with my dog is a must and why I love my Apple Watch and it’s rings feature for exercise and it’s little prompts to stand or breathe throughout the day.
It’s why despite the vast chunk out of my time that volunteering takes – I treasure it as a worthwhile pursuit that returns to me three fold in benefits.

Because without all this I would definitely be a person who would retreat happily into the wonderful world of writing and never come out. 

And that!

That would be very unhealthy.

A few more photos from a recent bike trip away to Cania Gorge. Because…I like taking photos and I may as well put them here because if writing is my first love than riding, camping and hiking definitely compete hard for second place. 

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And my favourite TV program – the campfire. It was freezing hence two pairs of socks and nearly sitting in the fire.

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