A few days before the end of 2011, I caught some sort of cold thing, which was miserable but that did prompt me to throw out not only the cigarettes but the ashtray as well. The cold lingered a bit and then went away. Sort of, but not completely. Those five words are the theme of the year thus far: Sort of, but not completely. The sickness, the illness, was at just the right pitch that if I was experiencing nicotine withdrawal, they were covered up by cold symptoms.
Underlying the sickness, in the background of it, was the murky malaise brought about by being sort of working but sort of not working. I struggle to see myself and present myself as a flexible, go-with-the-flow type of person, but when it comes to work, I am simply not. Beginning around the middle of December and going straight through until last Friday, there has not been a single normal week. The last week of last year and the first week of this year were screwy because while the holidays took occurred on a Sunday, they were observed on a Monday. Most people in my work sphere disappeared the Thursday and Friday before Christmas, so that week was a weird one. Then on the last Thursday of the year the cold arrived, and I feel like I’ve been hacking and coughing and sneezing and complaining ever since.
The week before last I got on a plane and went to Saint Louis. Then last week I got on another plane and returned. So there went two more weeks. And, just to add to the general weirdness of it all, last Thursday afternoon I was sitting right here at my desk and at about 1 or so in the afternoon, I realized I felt awful. After arguing with myself for a while, I conceded and buried myself beneath the covers, fully dressed except for my shoes. A couple of hours later I got up and was shivering so violently that I could barely shut the computer down. I took the hottest bath I think I’ve ever had and while it was still light outside went back to bed, where I remained until a little past 9 on Friday morning. I don’t think I’ve had the flu for more than a decade. It was strange getting out of bed on Friday. First, I am usually up before daylight. And second, the little white lights in my living room window were on, which was odd. Why I would have turned those on during the afternoon is beyond me. Maybe I did a bit of sleep walking and plugged them in during the nearly 20 hours that I was in bed fighting the fever. Who knows? Anyhow, when I got up I was craving scrambled eggs, which I took as a good sign. But then it got worse over the weekend, then a little better, than worse again. And the sort of but not completely continued.
So, I have a couple of notions about how to better enjoy next January. The first thing I’m going to do is to tell any and all clients – provided I’m still in this business – that I am absolutely unavailable from Christmas Eve through the second day of January. And the days after the second day of January will be normal business days whether clients are working or not. The second thing is to reschedule or completely forego the trip to Missouri. Because January is one of my favorite times of the year, and even though I’m still in the sort of foggy vagueness that can only be brought about by combining little illnesses with fuzzy schedules, I just realized that it’s over this week.
