Friday, January 28, 2011

The Joys of Being Sick!


Leah2
Originally uploaded by katzeye

Mark's son came down with something evil about a week ago. It may be a flu, but he is sick, sick, sick, and coughing non-stop.

I was down to only getting sick twice a year. It would happen in the fall-winter, and in the spring. That was it. Twice a year. It would be just a minor cold, a lot of the time, but sometimes as much as pneumonia, occasionally. Rarely.

But since Mark's son moved in a bit over three years ago, I have gotten sick about every other month. It's not all that surprising. Kids are often carriers of germs, and I need to wash my hands more often, clearly.

But, I have only been getting colds. They just slow me down for a day or two, more or less, and then I get over them. Knock on wood. But, I do have to be careful, because I am allergic to antibiotics, and due to other respiratory allergies, I am at risk for lung infections with any cold. If it gets worse, it can turn into bronchitis or pneumonia.

Also, I have no medical insurance.

So, any cold, even a mild one, has to be treated as if it is a bad, BAD case of the flu.

Which means that if my cold is not making me terribly miserable, just tired, a bit achy, a bit stuffy, I get the bonus of found time.

I love found time. It gives me a chance to catch up on emails, figure out how to do techno things that I might be in too much of a hurry to figure out during regular kinds of days, and work on my photos.

Also been creating some new promos for my business and thinking about ways to retool my business model to make it work better for my clients some areas.

Mark says that is when I find the time to think, ponder, write, and be creative. He is right.

If I were coughing as much as his son is even as I write this, I would not be able to do any of that so much. But being mildly sick makes it possible.

(Don't worry, he has been taken to the doctor, has meds, and I even went out and bought him orange and apple juice, so he is taken care of.)

And in a couple of days, when I have my sea legs again, I can dive into the fray once more (was that a kind of mixed metaphor oxymoron?), refreshed and ready to take it all on.

Well, maybe not all of it. My downtime often makes me rethink the quantity of things that I always seem to try to do, and revise that, too.

Less is more.

Time for another nap.