Three weeks ago I slipped on some neighbourhood icy sidewalks and wrenched a muscle in my back. It hurt for two and a half weeks and I was in enough pain that I had to temporarily suspend my fitness routine. No running. No swimming. Nothing overtly physical beside some gentle stretching and walking.
What I never considered—until I couldn’t do it anymore—was the impact a physical injury could have on my creative life.
Sure, I’ve been writing furiously here over that timespan of practice and effort and intention, but a lot of my posts over the last few weeks have been shrouded in an invisible fog of temporary inability to sit at a desk and write for long stretches, physical pain lifting my arms high enough to play my violin, or a blur of frustration about not being able to get out in nature for inspiration and stress relief.
And maybe this is obvious, but I don’t think we realize how important stable health is for having a creative lifestyle until suddenly we are not healthy anymore, even temporarily. Physical, mental, emotional. All of this is vital to clear the path for making art, playing music, typing words into a keyboard.
We can adapt, of course, but shifting to new modalities to work around longer term disabilities is the work of months or years, all respect given to those who do it successfully. Mode shifting, on the other hand, is not necessarily a quick jump to be made over a couple days or weeks because one foolishly slipped on the ice.