Of Playthings and Puppets

The last time I was truly sick, to the point of having to stay isolated to a couch for a whole day, I was ten. It was a Saturday, my brother was in the backyard, and I was pinned under a blanket within running distance of the toilet. A black and white monster movie marathon was playing on the Sci-Fi channel. As I drifted in and out of a dazed stupor, I watched, lazily casting a glance at giant squids, fungal blobs, and growling yetis toppling landmarks. After a while, I noticed the commercials began to repeat themselves. Once, twice, three times. In the end, I wasted my day away tallying monster movie commercials on a checklist and sucking down popsicles. Not a very productive day, but certainly rather enjoyable.

Not so much this time. Though I haven’t been throwing up and, in fact, feel rather well today, being sick as an adult is not as much of a picnic as it was while being a child. Having contracted this illness somewhere either Monday or Tuesday, my sickness boiled to a head Wednesday night and led to a “randomly hit by a truck in the middle of the night” feeling Thursday morning. I e-mailed out (sure beats calling when your throat is throbbing), went back to sleep, and eventually scheduled a doctor’s appointment. Not much more needs to be said, but let’s just say I got a nice dose of anitbiotics and directions to not go into work for 24 hours.

Well then.

Any hopes of making good use of my time certainly went out the window, as Thursday was bascially spent in a pseudo-daze between random Facebook postings and channel changing. Concentration was certainly out of the question as, trying to do something useful by reading a book, I became dizzy from the printed page. That’s not to say I didn’t try. And I kept at it. By late Thursday night, I had stacked up some good time for my Creativity Chart. Today got even better as, though I was apparently rather contagious, and aside from still feeling like someone had beaten me with a baseball bat, I was fully able to concentrate.

After a late sleep, a tasty breakfast, and a beautifully hot shower, I sat down and wrote for well over an hour.  I then moved on to something else and edited for another good deal of time. In all, before even sitting down to write this wonderful piece of blogging literature (modest, ain’t I?), I managed to squirm in my computer chair for 134 minutes. Not too bad, I’d say.

The problem, however, is that these past two weeks have not been nearly as successful. You may have noticed my lack of a Creativity Chart update as well as there not being an excerpt to share this week. Well, it’s not that I’ve been busy really. I’ve just had difficulty forcing myself to sit down and type away. Not entirely certain why. Of course, the sickness didn’t help from this Tuesday onward, but there really was no excuse for last week.

I wish I were being paid for this, it’d make doing it so much easier.

See for yourself just how badly I’ve performed:

Would you just look at all of those zeroes? I don’t know how I’ll ever expect to become a published author with those types of figures. But I suppose there are on times and there are off times, and lately has most certainly been off. Here’s hoping I can improve and actually put the idea swimming endlessly through my mind down so they can just stay the Hell out.