Iz Fluffy...

Body shape is all in how you look at it. For those of us who are fluffier, its a fine line between feeling good about self worth while acknowledging your need to whip the physical self into shape.

The trick is to realize that while appearance is not the sum total of who you are, it does reveal something about your personality. For instance, I'm sixty, lead a sedentary lifestyle, and my body type reflects that. It doesn't tell the entire story, of course, but if I led a very active life, I certainly wouldn't be nearly as fluffy.

A sedentary lifestyle can be one imposed by a medical condition (disability or asthma) or the sheer love of watching television (couch potato). Appearance alone doesn't reveal the cause behind the effect. In my case, it's a combination of medical and BICHOK (butt in chair, hands on keyboard), a common condition suffered by writers.

And for writers especially, the lure of the keyboard prevents that active lifestyle I mentioned. Every moment away from writing really is guilt driven. Time spent shopping or walking or doing the dishes is time lost that could be better spent in writing--at least that's what our minds tell us. Ah, it's a wicked choice, it is.

The evil truth is no writing = no income. No income = budget shortfall. So for every moment a writer spends away from their keyboard, there is a ticking clock in the back of their brain telling them they are losing money. It's not much of a surprise then that many authors are of the fluffy persuasion.

Oh, there are skinny writers. Yep. But I submit that many of them are a little higher on the income ladder and therefore not so tied to the keyboard. It takes a deliberate choice, a firm commitment, a lot of willpower to walk away from the computer and spend time on our personal health and welfare.

I'm not sure I have those, but this year I'm going to try. My first step will be to get up and walk around my apartment for five minutes out of every thirty. We'll see how that goes for a couple weeks. If its a successful attempt, then I'll stretch it out to ten minutes.

And I'll challenge the other fluffy writers to find some way to spend time on caring for themselves. What shall it be, my friends?

anny

PS: The winners for free e-book from my back list are MissKallie2000 for the comments on January 1 AND PamK for the comments from yesterday! Please e-mail me with your choice of title and format at annycook67@yahoo.com