On days when I’m not feeling well, I know I should write in the morning. Chances are, I’ll get a growing migraine as the day evolves, and by the afternoon, my brain will be unusable. Naturally, I commonly push back writing on those days.
Of course, I could argue that when I’m sick, I plainly don’t feel like doing anything at all, and that’s also true. But sometimes I wonder: Am I really postponing writing because I feel unwell, or am I doing it so I can write despite the pain later on?
It’s not exactly rational, is it? In fact, it’s a straight-up gamble. What if my headache gets so bad I can’t write at all? Then again, after almost three years of daily blogging, you know there’s always something.
Still, somehow, the satisfaction is greater when you succeed in writing with a headache than without one, and sometimes the pain—absent on most days—actually inspires an idea comfort can’t. It might add emotion or compassion. And however much slower the process, my writing undoubtedly benefits from it.
This isn’t to say you should seek out pain on purpose. If I could magically make myself write early on bad days, I still would. But it seems that every now and then, we are drawn to pain one way or another, and perhaps that’s neither good nor bad. Just one of many human idiosyncrasies that makes sense in the grand, cosmic picture, even if we can’t always see it.