Blog Post No. 534
As you can read in the title, my epic run is over. Thankfully (as far as I know from home testing) I haven’t gotten the dreaded COVID, but late last week, I succumbed to the common cold. Having not been sick for so long (I have to admit) I was a bit of a baby about it. Thankfully, I had a rare weekend off, so I was able to do what had to be done to kick the butt of any cold or flu. Nothing.
There really is no trick to fighting most colds. Bed rest are the answer nearly every time. I personally like to start with a shower and a nap as soon as possible. Since I don’t get sick days and the nature of my job meant that if I didn’t go in, no one would be there to open the building, I had to work the first morning. Thankfully, I’ve already been wearing a mask to the day job and there is a beautiful plexiglass partition that separates me from the rest of the world.
I notified my coworkers and kept cleaning the area like a raccoon “cleaning” its food. I made sure to keep my distance from everyone and as soon as my coworker was in to relieve me, I took off (after one more through cleaning of our shared desk). I still felt a little guilty about risking spreading the illness, but until our society gets behind the lip service of not going to work sick and provides actual sick days (and enough people to cover) there’s not much else I can do.
I do have a secret weapon for cutting down the duration of a cold, though. Everyone gets different symptoms and mine are a sore throat and congestion. Not much you can do about a sore throat but hot liquids and pain killers (other than resting) but for congestion, over the counter nasal spray has been a life saver. Pills never worked for me, but this stuff is like magic. The only drawback is that it works so well that when you stop, you feel more congested than normal for a few days. (It’s legitimately addictive, ask your doctor).
I limit my use to three days and usually just at night so I can get a good night’s sleep. Being able to sleep through the night literally cuts my colds down by days. I haven’t had a cold last longer than three days since I started to use the spray. That, and actually resting. I used to be sick for like two weeks, but I thought you were supposed to tough it out.
This time, my cold lasted three real days and one day that I milked. I didn’t have to work, but I didn’t do much of anything else either. Since I had started writing the first draft of the anthology novella (the new one for the end of the year) I failed on my daily writing and have fallen behind. Three of those days are legitimate, though. I hope to be back on track by the time this post goes out. The people involved had agreed to get their first draft done by April.
That leaves me with three weeks to get 20 000 words written. That’s nothing compared to the last three novellas in the Synthetic Albatross Series, but every time feels like a brand new challenge. Nothing I can do but make sure to sit at the computer every day and get at least some writing done. The biggest hurdle is always starting, the next biggest is continuing. I’ll have an update next week, either way. In the mean time, it’s nice to not be sick again and I have no excuse to not get back to writing once this post is done. (Which it is).
Ben Van Dongen 