Run. Write. Repeat

I don't run for personal bests.

I don't run to go faster.

I don't run for stamina.

I don't run to feel the burn.

I run to set my mind free.

We all run for reasons, we all exercise for some form of betterment, be it physical or mental. Exercise is not just about building muscle or stamina; it can mean a whole deal of things. It is cathartic, it is therapeutic, it is relaxing, empowering. It can be whatever you want it to be, and we all do it for our own reasons. I run to set my mind free. All through the day my mind is at work thinking and dreaming, but ever restraining itself, being pushed and pulled in every other direction. When I run though, it is free to think what it pleases, unencumbered by any other tasks other than the physical effort of putting one foot in front of the other. My body taking over the need to propel me forward; it deals with the pains, it draws on its own reserves of determination, allowing my mind to think as it wishes.

Exercise and creativity are uniquely linked. The filmmaker and writer Mark Duplass, in a recent interview about his film Paddleton, offered some words of wisdom about his writing habits, in which he suggests that to start your day, before you do anything, any writing, is to get up and put on your work out clothes, even if you don't intend to go and workout. The act of doing so subconsciously puts you in the mind frame of doing it. The very act of putting on my running gear is a big part of the setting out, of the preparation to run as soon as I don my t-shirt and shorts, and slip on my trainers, I can already feel the freeing of my mind. It knows what is to come. Our minds are incredibly smart. Even when we don't believe them to be active, they are picking up things, remembering them, making connections. They are ever-processing, building in such ideas of what those battered trainers, shorts, and t-shirt mean.

The second part to Duplass's advice is to actually exercise. Noting how the act of getting up and going invigorates and frees both the body and mind. Creativity is birthed in our minds, it is the finding of, and the crafting of, an idea. The actual doing is entirely separate to being creative. It is what differentiates a creative person from a writer, or a painter, or a designer. Creativity is just the thinking of it, the ideation of it. To be a writer is to do; it is to write. Exercise, whatever form it takes, is the doing; we become the runner, the weight-lifter, the yogi. We embody what we are in our doing of it. When I run, my mind is freed by the actual act of doing, of running, of achieving. It all begins to put my mind into the frame of writing. As I run, I am creating, I am letting my mind do as at pleases so that when I am home, when I take up my position at my desk to write, it is focused, it is fresh, it has been exercised and now it is ready to do, to write.

Exercise gives us the freedom to push our bodies, to beat those personal bests, to defy what we believe we can't do. Creativity is to believe what we cannot see, to express that which we feel we cannot. Both are about pushing ourselves and proving ourselves to ourselves. They are ultimately personal, but each are viewed externally, differently. Those who know us can see the impact our exercising has on us, and our creativity is to be shared and shown to the world. Every weekend I rise and I run, I create and I dream, and then I write. Putting everything I have thought of, been dreaming of into action, into words. I run to awaken myself, to set my mind free, allowing both my body and mind to feel the endorphins of exercise. If you want to do, do, don't think about exercising, don't think about being an artist or a poet, do it. Let one inform the other. Write to exercise, run to write.