A Mind-Body Connection

Why blog, you say? Because blogging is going to finally make an honest writing teacher out of me. For years, I've preached to my students about the welcoming arms of Writing, that Mother of Essay Exiles, who cries,

"Give me your frustrated, your literal-minded,
Your left-brained masses yearning to be creative,
The math-science kids of your classrooms.
Send these, the disorganized, writing test-tossed to me..."

I lecture all the live long day about how writing is just like anything else- a skill that must be practiced, worked at, and reworked. That some days it's pretty good and some days it's cat-spray-on-your-front-door bad. That it's really not as if authors walk around under a constant cloud of inspiration. (Settle down there, Stephen King. We all know you're the exception.) And that the point is to JUST DO IT, while wearing Nikes, if that helps. Too bad for me, I never believed a word I said, thought it was all just a load of... SENTENCE FRAGMENTS... when it came to my own writing.

BUT ME NOT HYP-O-CRITE A-NY-MORE. ME WRITE TOO. ME NE-AN-DER-THAL, BUT NOT HYP-O-CRITE. And now I'm a few months into this "blogging thing" and sometimes it feels good and other times feels like that stupid cat turned the handle on the front door, walked directly into our house, and peed right on my new Nikes. Tonight might be more smelly wet shoes. We'll have to see.

Now I'm just hoping that this writing muscle I've just started flexing will somehow be a positive influence on the rest of my body, preferably the muscles in my abdomen, arms, and legs... but especially my abdomen... and my upper back. If the exercised part of my mind that's writing this blog could just send a shout-out of encouragement to the rest of my body to get off it's lazy butt and go for a run, or even just a walk, at least to the end of the street FOR CRYING OUT LOUD, that would be cool. Then I would no longer have to control the urge to be violent every time Lil' Miss grabs my belly and asks, "When is the baby coming, Mom?" which makes my cells divide at a world record pace, not enough to burn any calories, but definitely enough to point in the direction of my stomach and answer her with, "YOU! YOU did this to me! You and your brother with your nine and ten pound bodies respectively that caused strangers to stop and stare in utter disbelief at the country fair's grand prize winning watermelons growing in my stomach!"

If only I could summon my Olympic hopeful eleven-year-old gymnast version of myself, the one with rock hard abs and rippling biceps who was too focused on training as if I was the second coming of Nadia Comaneci to appreciate how fit she was. Until then, it's back to Golden Spoon for another dish of consolatory yogurt to go with my three helpings of brownie topping while I rehearse the Every Monday Morning plan to get in shape.