After a year of burnout, physical exhaustion, worsening mental health, and pushing my limits as much as I could, my body gave up on me. I was taken down not by Covid, the flu, or even that time I had E. Coli. It was the common cold that laid me low and while I was able to keep working through most of it, I definitely did not like doing that. Couldn’t even let myself rest while I was so stuffed up I’d go into my bathroom to steam out my sinuses at least twice a day, just to keep things manageable (nothing else was sufficient). Capitalism and modern society demands that, and going into the office today (the day I’m writing this), regardless of whose health it risks, since I am not in such a comfortable position that I can afford to take more days off in-between the holidays (or I could, but then I’d need to work during the holidays). I managed to mitigate the worst of it by putting in a hard day’s work while I was only mildly feverish (or not feverish at all while the acetominophen was working) so I could work from home the subsequent two days, but it was still not great. This is the sickest I’ve been in years. Even that time I got the flu (made more mild by my vaccination) a few years back and spent two days semi-conscious on my couch watching the freely available seasons of Pokemon on Amazon until they somehow turned into the Emperor’s New Groove on repeat was less bad than this. At least that passed [this post is going up on day 14 of me being sick, though now my ears are clogged and my brain’s still a little fuzzy rather than the “standard” cold symptoms I still had when I wrote this]. At least the medicine I had available worked. This cold, though? Nothing really helped for long and my last five days have been an endless cycle of soothing mitigations as I dealt with one symptom at a time until I somehow got a decent couple hours of coherence and decongestion before it all came back.

I’m pretty sure I caught my cold either during my one thousand mile drive home from visiting my friends (I was in and out of a lot of gas stations, rest stops, and various other forms of roadside stops that put me in close-proximity to other travelers bearing coughs and sniffles from all over) or from my brief trip into a Walgreens during a snowstorm because I was all bundled up in my still-in-PJs-but-covered-up outfit and couldn’t get my mask to sit right without removing more layers than my exhausted, semi-coherent self was willing to deal with. Heck, it might have been a much more mild cold originally, but the ripple effect of my post-drive (and post caffeine crimes) sleep schedule meant I wasn’t sleeping well for a few days in a row and that probably left me vulnerable to this cold. I was fine one day, had a fever the next night, and then was a congested mess half a day after that. Now, it’s clearing up a bit so only my ears are constantly stuffed. My nose is still a problem, as is the cough I’ve got thanks to all that phlegm, but I can at least think clearly today [alas, it was only for a limited time that day and I’ve been in and out of a mild fog ever since]. That’s an improvement on the past few days where I had to turn off every source of noise in order to think through how to do a bunch of crafting and macros in Final Fantasy 14 that I’d already done multiple times before, but I’m hoping that another day or two will bring an end to the congestion so I’m not spending a significant amount of each day trying to pop my ears[it did not]. It’s intolerable.

Thanks to my penchant for masking, this is my first real cold in six years. I got one back in early 2019 and then haven’t gotten another one since because I haven’t gone into any public spaces without a mask or touched any surfaces outside my apartment without making sure to clean my hands thoroughly before touching my face, food, or anything in my apartment other than my door and the faucet. It’s a pretty good streak! Six whole years! I’d prefer to have gone longer without a severe cold, but that ship has sailed and all I can do is reflect on setting a pretty impressive record. Sure, I’ve gotten a few minor sniffles here or there and been made sick by drastic changes in the temperature, but nothing that has hit as hard or as significantly as this cold has. I mean, even if I wasn’t already committed to the Mask Life, this would really reinforce that idea since being sick like this absolutely sucks and I can pretty safely trace it back to a lack of safety precautions on my part due to either travel or the related exhaustion. A good reminder to make no exceptions when it comes to masking. Better to have to remove layers than to get this sick again…

Now though, as I’m slowly mending (while dealing with temporarily worse tinutus thanks to the congestion), I wish I could afford to rest more. I’ve got a long break coming up, two weeks around the holidays and new year, but that’s not doing to do me any good with getting over this cold [as I enter my third week of this and my last week before said vacation, I’m starting to think that, maybe, I need that two weeks off to get over this cold]. Neither is the unfortunately hectic, busy pace of my current work days as I try to cram as much work into these last two weeks before my holiday break as I can. There’s just so much to do, so much that needs mental energy from me, and I am struggling to stay on top of it all… Buying gifts, sending out my secret santa package (which is late due to illness, but should be sent out by the time this post goes up), and staying on top of my plans while also recovering from being sick. Because it has now been a full week, today is the 8th day of illness, and I’m still having mild cotton brain. I need everything to slow down for a little bit so I can catch up without dropping anything. It’s honestly kind of overwhelming to think about it all and while I don’t really have any choice but to move forward as best as I can if I want to stick to my commitments and continue to make the money I need to afford modern living, I really wish I actually had a choice. I hate feeling mentally incapacitated in any way and struggling to focus and remember things through the mild brain fog and exhaustion of this illness feels miserable. I really wish I could just wake up tomorrow, instantly better. It would solve so many of my problems and stressors. But that’s not how this works and all I can actually do is make sure I get enough sleep that I don’t wind up getting worse again.