Some things are well worth the cost. Exercise is one: yes, it takes time, and often it takes time to make the time. Then there’s the actual energy expended. We do it because exercise is a eustressor. The exercise of exercise triggers adaptations in the body, including the strengthening of muscles and building the resilience of multiple systems.

I wish I could make the language match the reality, but I can’t get this all to sound right. 

I’ve said—we say—that working out takes time. But for one thing, we give it time, and for another, it gives back more than it takes. How do I express the product? I get a boost from a midday walk, and then a task that might have taken two sluggish hours might turn into a peppy half-hour job. The time “spent” exercising can be subtracted from the hour and a half I gained.

Writing is this way too, but the math is even more nuanced. The muscle is my brain—and, I suppose, whatever core muscles I have to activate to avoid hunching over with my eyeballs glued to my phone or laptop. Time exits the equation if I can get into that flow state, the timelessness of absorption. Hours “spent” writing are gone as soon as I blink and clear the crust at the corner of my eye. Inside the work, it’s a perpetual motion machine, it’s compound interest, it’s a walk through the labyrinth or on a treadmill. I’ve gone so far! I’ve “gotten” nowhere and gotten something, all at once.

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Writing prompt: Write about a generous, generative activity, one that feeds itself or leads to another once you get going with it.

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