March 08, 2007

The Filling Of A Blank Mind

Have you run out of things to say on your blog?

Clearly Catherine was talking to me because there were only two of us in the room and only one of us has a blog. (Besides, she couldn't possibly be talking out loud to herself because she rarely asks questions when she's doing that, it's more just statements. I'm the one who asks the questions when talking to myself out loud. Mostly things like Are you crazy?! or What the heck was that?! But I suppose that's another story entirely.)

Why do you ask? I asked.

Because you haven't updated it as often as you usually do.

Oh. Well....uhhh..... I stuttered. And then for some reason I just decided to let whatever was on my mind come out of my mouth, which is never a good idea.

I just haven't had the time lately. I mean, it's not that I haven't had the time, it's just that I've been too busy. What I'm saying is that I haven't been overly busy, I'm just doing other things. Well, um.... uh..... I suppose I haven't had any wonderfully new ideas. Yeah, I guess you're right.

Catherine went back to doing whatever she was doing on the computer and I started mulling this thought over a bit. I consider myself a fairly creative chap, able to come up with different types of ideas for different types of things. If I may say so, I also consider myself a pretty decent story teller. I'm no Aesop by any means, but I know how to link a few words together into somewhat meaningful sentences.

So why has my mind been blog-blank?

You know what I've realized? I bet you don't. I've realized that the more I exercise, the more stories I come up with. This is funny for a couple of reasons. Firstly, not all of my stories are exercise-related (though many of them are). Yet for some reason, when I get my training on, it apparently stimulates my mind to come up with interesting things to talk about. Secondly... actually, I don't have a secondly. Forget secondly. Secondly is dead to me.

The past two weeks have mostly found me recovering from surgery or a cold. Or, really, both. I spent most of my time on the couch with my hands firmly clasped around the remote control. With the way I felt and the multitude of drugs I was on, they'd have to pry that remote out of my cold dead fingers.

One would think that this image alone would bring about a few stories. But one would be wrong, nothing even came to mind. Maybe it was the drugs.

Yet the moment I got myself on the bike again and dilly-dallied into the pool, I once again started thinking of things to say. As my body became active, so did my brain.

There's clearly some link in here between exercising the body and exercising the mind. And there's clearly some philosophical cum spiritual cum anatomical insight to all of this. And clearly that insight is completely eluding me.

But right now, both my body and mind are on the road to recovery. Which I suppose means you'll be hearing from me more than you have been over the past few weeks.

Unless, of course, I get injured.
Or too busy.
Or, you know, anything else that comes to mind.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Great post. I completely agree. I've been down and out with a cold and it's been hard to come up with anything I deem "worthy" to say. Hope you're on the mend and back to posting soon.

Anonymous said...

Same here and also when training isn't going well. I mean, it's fun to write when things are going great, but what do you say when you had a very lousy week...
Looking forward to the upcoming posts!

Robin said...

There's definitely something to your theory. It might be the crossover effect. In occupational therapy, they often have people do exercises that cross the left-right brain barrier, like crawling, or touching your right hand to left foot. Well, running is a crossover activity, as is swimming, and cycling uses right-left patterning as well.

In any case, I'm with you, when I'm not exercising I don't think, or at least not much ;-)

Hope you're on the mend soon!