Earlier this week, I experienced a rare moment of epiphany—which has left me with some problems to solve. Though certainly grateful for the amazing realization (which should have seemed obvious to me—don’t we all look at our epiphanies and think, “Why didn’t I already know this?” Maybe we did but we just couldn’t admit it to ourselves…), I now feel like I need some help in acting on it. Maybe you have the answer I need.

I’ve discovered that I’ve been living my life in my head. This epiphany came to me after I’d been watching some Sir Ken Robinson videos on YouTube (he’s hilarious and insightful—a rare combination and treat!). He was talking about how, while in school, we are instructed to live inside our heads instead of our bodies. Mentioning a girl who was diagnosed with attention problems, Sir Robinson explained how her issues were immediately remedied once he suggested she enroll into a dance school. She just needed to move her body! We can’t just sit still all day, absorbing information (or trying to) in our heads and not using our bodies. Not only is it unhealthy; it also trains us to not use our bodies later in life, promoting health problems like obesity as well as general lack of enjoyment of life. If you can’t experience life with all of what you have that you can use—not because of ability, but because of being trained to live in this way—you’re surely not getting nearly as much out of it as you can.

And that’s what I’ve been doing! I’ve been raised to be a cerebral person, living in my head. I do not mean that I am brilliant and sit around doing mathematical equations all day long; I definitely don’t mean that. But I enjoy, work with, and do mostly things in my head. If it’s not child care or household chores, it typically involves me sitting down and using my head (along with the wonderful opposable thumbs my fellow humans and I were blessed with)—reading, writing, journaling, art, musing, even bathing… Even in choir, which I loved so much, or teaching and tutoring, which were my favorite jobs, my head, mouth, and hands were pretty much all I used.

I live inside my head. And I don’t like that.

Let me rephrase: I actually love living inside my head. It’s not a bad place to live, especially if I’m reading Lloyd Alexander or Neil Gaiman that week.