Writing and Exercise

When I left my job five years ago I became dedicated to building a writing practice. I’m not sure I could explain why, but for some reason it felt important, and like something I should be doing. So I started, like most, with a journal. Sometimes I wrote daily, sometimes weekly. Mostly I wrote at night, right before bed. Sometimes I’d wake up ready to write. But any period of consistency was met with equal or longer periods of not writing. It was hard to keep it going.

My longest streak was 50 straight days in 2021. I was participating in a 50 day run challenge. I thought, I could write about how the challenge is going each day. It worked.

But other than that, it’s been a serious of starts and stops. In contrast to my writing practice, my exercise practice hasn’t missed more than a few weeks over the same period of time.

Exercise comes naturally to me is what I tell myself, but that’s wrong. If it feels natural, that’s because I’ve been doing it for 24 straight years. More than half my life.

So the question is, like my writing practice, what did my exercise practice look like 19 years ago, when I was only 5 years in. I’m sure there was room for improvement (and still is).

If I take my experience writing from the last few years, and compare it to trying to start an exercise routine at 36, I can see where people struggle.

Unlike writing, in addition to being mentally taxing, exercise is physically challenging. If you’re new, there’s a lot to learn. You have to leave your house to do it. You’re going to be sore. There’s other less challenging, more fun things you could be doing. Building that habit is hard.

For people that have built exercise into a habit, we’ve forgotten about all these pain points. Well writing has made me sensitive to them again.

But I also feel reassured. Because after five years my writing practice is keeping up (at least in consistency, if not quality) with my exercise practice. Do anything enough and you’re bound to improve.