Hello again. It’s been a while since I’ve been sick. For the last few years, whenever I’ve fallen ill, it’s been something minor. However, last week was different. I had a fever that lasted multiple days, followed by a terrible cold, and now a lingering cough that’s preventing me from regaining my energy levels. As a result, writing has become a struggle.
I’m not one to believe that the universe is trying to send me a sign, but I find the timing of this intriguing. Over the last few months, I’ve been in an intensive work period. What was fascinating about that was that physically, I felt absolutely fine. I had clarity in what I was doing, and I didn’t find my work burdensome, despite its difficulty. I was able to move from one day to the next, writing between 12,000 and 17,000 words a day, Monday through Friday, with no trouble.
During that period, I had this feeling that I could maintain that pace indefinitely. I still had time to spend with my family and friends, and to engage in my community. All the while I was writing a significant amount of words.
Then something fascinating happened. I had to start wrestling with some big questions that could significantly impact my life and as I began to grapple with these questions, I felt as though everything else in my life started to fall apart. When I take stock of my life, nothing has fallen apart, but I definitely had this perception that my life was collapsing around me.
It could be that I am prone to overdramatization, but I don’t think that’s it. I really think that psychologically, because I had these large questions that I couldn’t answer, my brain wasn’t able to commit enough bandwidth to everything else in my life. As a result, I couldn’t see that I was fine, that I was on the right track, and instead, over the last three weeks, I’ve had an existential crisis.
As this crisis came to a head, I fell ill. Not like I normally do, as I have a fairly strong immune system. When I get sick, it’s usually for 24 hours at most, often less than that. I might throw up once if I catch a stomach bug, then I’ll generally feel a bit under the weather for a couple of days, and then I’ll be fine. This time was different. I had a fever for multiple days and felt completely drained. I felt as though I was walking in a haze, unable to summon the motivation to do anything.
I really think that it had as much to do with being worn down emotionally and spiritually as it did with being worn down physically. Most of my vblog posts are about how to do something cool. This is not one of those blogs. This is just a blog where I want to verbally process what’s been going on with me, to try to understand it.
In the future, when it happens again, because it probably will, I want to be able to identify it. If I could have identified it earlier, if I could have realized that I needed to take these emotional and mental challenges seriously, maybe I wouldn’t have gotten sick. I don’t know if there’s a connection between our mental and emotional state and our physical state, but I think there is.
That’s all this blog is. If I can avoid dying from coughing I’m going to get back to writing. That’s a joke. I will definitely continue writing, regardless of whether I die or not.
YouTube Video Link: https://youtu.be/XkCAT_BXt0c
Thanks for reading and watching.
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