Last Week
I resolved to: post every day, which I kept up till Thursday; edit 10 pictures every day, which I did… three times, to be generous; write comprehensive lists, which I fucking rocked, y’all; and think about TV, which I did a little bit while browsing my fandom spaces.
Today
I’m sick. I woke up yesterday with a weird throat, and within three hours I was feeling the kind of cold that had already made itself at home in my body — snotty throat, runny nose, general head fuzziness. By bedtime my nightstand looked like a box of tissues had exploded on it, and when I tried to sleep, I couldn’t breathe through my nose. So I sat up. And started feeling a little manic. And then I got up and showered and the hyperactive ginger cat came to nose around my room and hopped on my bed and let me scratch her little face and now I’m waiting for the sun to rise. I’m also congested. Very congested.
All I have to combat this thing is ibuprofen, and not even that much of it, so I’m hoping it’ll rush out of my system just like it rushed from warning (sore throats are my warning) to full-blown cold. If it doesn’t, I… well, then I’m fucked. The last time I had an ugly cold for a full week, I mainlined the first season of Game of Thrones, and while the idea of picking up a TV show I don’t care about and won’t want to keep up with and watching through the entire thing for a week appeals to me, I’ve got rent to pay and my finances are not stable enough to take a week off.
Shit, a whole week off. I don’t even know what that would look like. Wait, no, the idea is taking shape in my head. It would be lovely. It would look a lot like a normal week, only without stress. Why can’t I take a sick week? I always get more done when I let my brain switch off anyway. Let it happen, self. Let sickness be your guide.
Ugh, can’t. But I may well try. I’m going to crash mid afternoon anyway. See, the thing about me being sick is for a couple of awful, glorious days, all my other crap doesn’t seem to register. The sleep disorder, the eating issues, half the anxiety (except I’m still stressed), the limitations my brain insists on setting upon me… there is none of that. There is only feeling like death warmed over. It’s almost like being a normal person. It’s the great equalizer, in the most ass-backwards way you could use that term. Maybe I’m 24 years old and I can do anything!
Well, anything except set up an email autoresponder or something that tells people I’m taking a sick day/week. I can’t do that. I’ve got rent to pay.
It might be easier if I didn’t have a massive backlog of shit to catch up on, maybe. Possibly. Which is actually another reason I’m so annoyed this cold just suddenly dropped itself on me: I spent all weekend working on my Backlog Plan, a thorough list of everything I need to do to be fully caught up on work-related tasks by November 8 (as per my 25 Before 25 goal list). There are some things I don’t know how to list, but I filled up a few pages of my notebook and also worked out the entire revamp of my blog categories. I was getting somewhere, goddammit.
Not only that, but my coaching call with Lisette van der Valk (a one off; she had a thing going when she started her newsletter and I jumped on it; had no idea I’d feel so comfortable talking to her and actually come out of it with valuable… insights? Thoughts? Ideas for how to get to the bottom of crap?) on Friday morning — okay, evening, but I’d just got out of bed — got me realizing a lot of things about the way I work and how I’m most efficient and what works most efficiently for me. For instance, I used to always take a few minutes before getting on my laptop to pet my cat and update my to-do lists. This was back when I kept a single running to-do list — a to-do list that remains, to date, the one I’ve kept up with for the longest stretch of time, without changing formats and losing my momentum to the change.
What worked back then was plain loose pages that I cut out of my sister’s A4 squared paper notebooks and carried around inside an A5 notebook of mine — for convenience and something to lay the pages on to write on my lap, not because the notebook had anything to do with anything.
There was no design on them, nothing fancy: they were just a running to-do list with checkboxes and indents and even a list of daily tasks with dates next to them. I usually wrote these out in 10s or 12s so I could keep archiving pages, which I think is a major part of why this worked for me — it allowed me to start over on a regular basis. I’m one of those people who’ll start a notebook all excited and then after ten days it will start looking boring, or I’m not sure I like the way I’m writing on it, and I want a do-over. That didn’t happen with my to-do pages.
I stopped using that system when 2012 became 2013. I also stopped exercising. Can we say New Year’s Bad Decisions? What was I thinking.
Anyway, I also found that taking an hour at the beginning of my day to just think about things or talk to my best friend and dabble in my fandom spaces and not work could potentially be a good thing to do. In the future. For my sanity.
So anyway.
Weekly Wishes
Take it easy. You’re sick. Do what you have to do, and what you want to do, and don’t push yourself. Take naps. Stay fed. Eat the cheap stuff since you can’t taste anything anyway. Take this poorly-timed-but-could-be-worse opportunity to fine-tune your to-do list/schedule system, and maybe edit lots of pictures if your eyes allow, and write lots of words if your brain allows. You know you like how you sound when you’re sick so maybe make that new youtube channel you wanted and post an inaugural video where you just whine. Keep it under four minutes. Remember you want to actually stick with the channel and long videos are a pain in the ass to handle. Or don’t! You don’t have to vlog, you know.
Figure out the new dailies. Fuck apps. Just do it like you used to. Only with completely different goals, what with the new thing you’re trying for your sleep schedule and not really having trich except maybe once every two weeks and very, very, very sadly not having a guitar at your disposal. Consider redoing the exercise chart from 2012 too.
Help mom figure out how best to ship a coat internationally. If anybody wants to help, seriously, please do. I’m looking at standard Correos/Royal Mail delivery, and at DHL. Shit is really expensive but that coat was a treat and an investment and I need it stat. I’m obviously going to see if I can get more things in that shipment than just a coat, too. Anyone have experience with this stuff? Surely there are ways to send boxes full of clothes to people that are better/more affordable/safer than others? Please help me. SUPER IMPORTANT!!!! PRESSING MATTER!!! THAT I NEED HELP WITH!!!
Take naps. This needs repeating. I wonder what I’d have to do to get the ginger kitten to settle the fuck down and take a nap with/on me. What I can also do is snuggle in a corner of my bed, which is a sofa bed, with my laptop. Would be nice if I had a throw… and an armchair, but I can make do.
In Conclusion
This is going to be an interesting week.
How do you deal with colds and temporary sickness? If you’re a freelancer or small business owner, do you find it easy to take those days off?