Here’s the deal: I really have trouble writing blog posts recently. I’m still a bit puzzled about why that is, but I have a good theory now. I’ll use this post to share my thought process with you because, first, this is something to write a blog post about, and second, that way we can both see if I’m right.
Writing a blog post each week is something I’ve done regularly for quite a few years now. While I want to absolutely keep my upload schedule for the comic, only with rare and pre-announced breaks, I’m not forcing myself to the same rigor with the blog. It’s always been a side project that I consider optional. However, I really enjoy writing these so they also became quite regular. For that reason, it worries me when I sit in front of a blank page and it feels like a chore. It doesn’t feel like a chore now, but that’s because I have started writing. The chore is staring at the blank page and coming up with a topic. You might think that it’s just a regular case of writer’s block, but this is different.
In university, I had to deal with writer’s block frequently. My solution is always to just start writing. It sounds stupid, but it’s almost like a magic trick. I try to find the lowest hanging fruit for what the first action could be, don’t worry about whether it’s the best action and just do it. The problem is, in all these cases it’s about starting a task that I have to do. There is a clear reason why I have to do it. For my blog posts, I have absolutely no idea why I’m doing it. The first step is figuring out what to write about and there’s not really any wiggle room there. But that’s always been the case and in the past that wasn’t a problem, so why is it a problem now?
Well, if I didn’t think of a fun topic before and can just pick that, my process usually involves thinking about myself, my life and what emotions I’m feeling. But that’s precisely the problem I have right now, because I’m in agony and I don’t know why. Unfortunately, the reason you are feeling certain emotions isn’t always obvious. You might know that one important responsibility of our conscious mind is to explain our emotional state. When something happens, an emotional response is triggered independently and our brain needs to figure out for itself why the thing that happened caused the emotional response. When a tiger jumps out of a bush, the endocrine system just screams “run” but the brain needs to connect this information to the tiger to figure out *where* to run. In the case of the tiger that is quite obvious, but for more abstract emotions that might not be obvious at all. And the agony I’m feeling is of exactly that kind.
Now we’re getting somewhere, right? We have to figure out what is upsetting me so much. I keep preaching on this blog how important it is to know yourself, so this one can’t be so difficult to figure out. And so I evaluated hypothesis after hypothesis, turning every negative experience, every unfortunate situation and everything that I can come up with into an experiment. By thinking deeply about each one, I can try and find something new about it. You see, if my recent agony was caused by any of them, there would have to be something I haven’t properly addressed. If there was something, looking directly at it, studying it and properly discussing it with myself usually fixes it. And, as a nice side effect, that’s often even a good blog post idea. But not this time. Whatever I tried I just came up with “yeah, I’ve been there, that still sucks, but that’s just not it”.
But then it hit me. I was thinking about how much easier life could be if I were irresponsible enough to just drown my sorrow with drugs as I suddenly remembered that I’m a biochemical machine and emotions don’t always have external causes. I feel really stupid for not thinking about this earlier since I’ve tripped over this so many times before, but it’s just an energy deficit. I have started participating in a new sports course two weeks ago, right before the unexplainable agony started and I have not reduced the amount of physical activity I’m doing elsewhere. My body is running outside its usual energy budget!
If you think that’s implausible, good for you, you’re probably not fat. But I’ve observed this pattern in my own life often enough now to firmly believe it’s true: the worst times of my life are usually the ones where I’m losing weight. It took me a while to figure this out. When I was still inexperienced in understanding my emotions I had all sorts of theories why I was so depressed, angry or just in agony and probably did some stupid things as a result. But when I figured this out for the first time, it all clicked into place. This is not a fringe theory either, medical experts acknowledge that fat tissue participates in all sorts of hormonal activity that we don’t fully understand. But doesn’t it make perfect sense that you’d feel sad, lethargic and just bad if your energy reservoirs are shrinking? When I then thought back at what periods of my life I felt bad and correlated it with how much sports I was doing at that time, it all made perfect sense.
That was already some time ago, but for some reason I keep forgetting about it. I didn’t think to apply it to my current situation until now. So should I just stop going to that sports course? Most definitely not. I need to lose those fat reserves to be healthy. In fact, I need to lose a lot more of them. It’s just a bit of a bummer how my mental health and my physical health seem to be inversely correlated. Except it isn’t, because my mental health is actually inversely correlated to the first derivative of my physical health. If I keep exceeding my energy budget, my body will adjust the budget accordingly. And then my physical health will improve while my mental health can return to normal. I just have to wait it out.
There you go, that’s my theory. If you’re as unfortunate as I am to have way too many fat cells, maybe it’s even helpful to you as well. Just remember that everyone is different and your body doesn’t necessarily behave in the same way as mine. And if you’re not fat, maybe this post gave you some insights into why losing weight is so annoyingly difficult. Or maybe you found it entirely pointless. Anyways, I got to write a blog post and I count that as a success.
