Fanning away the miasma of depression, one writing session or workout at a time

Previously, I only snuck in an hour of writing maybe once a week, if I were lucky. I'd write on a weekday, after dinner, when my spouse was playing video games, thinking, "Well, this would be a good time to!"

But otherwise, I'd spend most of the week upset with myself for not writing consistently. And for what? I don't publish that often (at least on my Substack), and my readership isn't huge, so it's not like there are people sitting at the edge of their seats for the next article I write.

Even with that logical thinking, I still felt that constant nagging and continuous disappointment. Why wasn't I spending more time writing? Isn't that the most important thing to me? Yet, I'd scroll my phone instead, or watch random YouTube videos. After a while of ignoring the part of me begging to open up my document and get to work, I think that nagging and disappointment mutated into something like miasma deep inside, seeping out of me until everything that I looked at or did was affected by this fog of depression.

This was (and let's be real, is) a regular cycle for me. I get good at writing fairly consistently, fall off the wagon, then spend all my time guilting myself for not writing instead of actually writing.

That was, until about a month ago when I started exercising regularly.

I'm cringing at what I'm about to write, but honestly, I can't believe how much easier it is to clear the miasma when I'm active versus when I'm sedentary.

I truly never thought I'd be a workout evangelist, but here I am. My teenage version of myself is probably gagging at the idea, probably calling me a poser, haha!

But for the most part, working out has made a world of difference in my mood and my belief in what I can do.

With all my newfound energy, I've been showing up to write every day at 7 a.m. To some, that may not sound monumental, but considering I regularly slept in until 8:30-9:30, this was a pretty dramatic change.

Though it's not just the magic of exercise or my willpower alone that's been dragging my ass out of bed. It's the responsibility of hosting virtual Shut Up & Write meetings every day at 7 am (except on Wednesdays).

Until this week, I had no problem getting up to do these, but as I reach the end of my luteal phase and will start my period any day now, I've been struggling to keep up both my newfound commitment to writing and to my fitness.

I had a thought this morning about how, even though I'm doing an hour of writing each day, I'm still not done drafting one article for my Substack after almost two weeks.

So this morning, I'm fighting off the feeling that sometimes pops up of "Why bother?" and I'm letting my changing cycle and hormones take the blame for this recent bit of (albeit much lighter) miasma.

Thankfully, though, between the virtual writing groups and my 10k training, it's much easier for me to dispel the depressing miasma than it was before.

It's like this time: I have a powerful fan to blow it all away, rather than just trying to use my hands.