When I got back a week ago, I woke up to find my voice crumbling all around the edges. This is pretty rare and, needless to say, not a good thing if 99.9% of your day job is talking too much. It also makes it difficult to carry on a conversation — people have trouble keeping a straight face when everything you say comes out sounding like the pimple-faced kid on The Simpson’s (“I’m gonna tell my manager!”).
But, eventually, I got caught up on my sleep and snuggling after being away. My voice came back. I sat around and terrorized the kids. I got cracking on the second draft again . . . at least, I started to. And then things started heating up at work, the weekend hit, I went to the movies, we had dinner guests coming, there was a house to clean and stuff to do.
And in the middle of it all, I took a walk on Sunday afternoon. it wasn’t very far but at the end of it I was exhausted. Making dinner that night, I was too tired to stand. I brought a chair into the kitchen and Keeley found me in it when she came home. I made it through dinner prep and the guests, got the kids to bed, and then collapsed on the couch under a wave of aches and chills.
Next morning, I felt like I’d been rolled in crushed glass. The thermometer confirmed it, I was sick.
I sat back and took a look at my schedule. I had three or four meetings — all of which had already been rescheduled from the week before because of the funeral or losing my voice. So I told myself to be a man, took some medicine, and went to work.
I made it through my meetings and almost through the day before reality and illness set in. I wandered home and crashed on the couch. By ten o’clock that night, my fever was cresting at 102 and I knew I was in for a hard, fast burn. At least, I thought to myself, it won’t take long to burn itself out.
I was wrong.
Three days of fevers, coughing. Up until yesterday, most of my time was spent on the couch moaning — ’cause I’m such a tough guy. And I didn’t get a speck of writing done. Not a lick, not a jot.
Finally made it back to work today. I cannot believe how much time I lost this week. Tonight I’m still trying to catch up. But there’s laundry to be done, a weekend coming, the kids on spring break, a team of people who busted their collective asses at work while I moaned and shivered.
I’m now officially weeks behind where I thought I would be on the second draft . . . and I don’t know when I’m going to find that block of time to keep pushing the second draft along.
(Yes. I realize that I could be doing some of that instead of this. Thank you.)
As I type this, the television is on with the new ‘This American Life’ show. The current segment is about a woman who discovered in her seventies that she wanted to be a writer. So she sat down and wrote a screenplay — never written a word before that point.
I should stop whining now.