I'm into Week #3 of the Cold That Would Not Die.
Admittedly, part of this is probably my fault: I pushed myself way too hard on Thursday and Friday, emotionally and physically. Sometimes you can't avoid these things; sometimes, you don't want to.
At any rate, it is an interesting thing, being forced to slow down so significantly, to find a setting (or be forced into one) between "full-bore" and "off." I walk, but more slowly and not as far, and only when I have the energy to do even that. I forgo my usual full routine of Nei Kung, happy if I can do just 10 or 15 minutes of Horse Stance. I take longer to do everything, it seems: brushing my teeth, finding the items I'm looking for at the drugstore, getting dressed, putting away my clothes. It is like being very, very young, or perhaps like being very, very old. It reminds me of being very, very sick, although thankfully, I know what very, very sick really feels like and I'm nowhere near that, knock wood.
I'm just...hampered.
Almost six years ago, I wrote a little item about how it felt: the "governor" cold, I called it. It was a way to reframe the annoyance, both to remind me that, compared to what I'd been through before, it ain't no thang, and to maybe make it a little useful to me. Which it is. I've stopped drinking coffee, and I'm actually going to bed when I'm tired. Remarkable.
I've also revisited my nightly "gratitude dump." No, not that kind of dump (although given my plumbing, I'm always grateful for a good dump). It's a kind of elaboration on the gratitude journal, where I just spill out thing after thing after thing that I am grateful for, until I've exhausted four columns on a page of my 8 1/2 x 11", college-ruled notebook. Some of the things get a little silly, like "roof" or "spiral notebook." Then again, if you think about it, both of those things are pretty awesome, and I have them along with four-columns-minus-two-lines' worth of other awesome things.
Partly as an outgrowth of my feelings of gratitude and partly out of sheer self-interest, I finally signed on with Kiva and made my first loans. (Thank you, Jason and Jodi, for the brilliant idea; it was the best I felt all weekend.
I did a few other, small things, too: got the last four installments of the newsletter posted to the archives, for example. Restrung one of my guitars to pass along to a friend, now that I'm done with it. (Don't worry, I kept the other one.) Cooked some meals. Drank a lot of weak tea and hot water with lemon. Got my hair did. And wrote every day, either longhand or in the Google Wave with Dave, downloading this crazy stream of stuff that starting gushing a few weeks ago. Maybe being sick is actually good for thinking? Dave seems to be going through the same thing, both cold and crazy-stream-downloading, so yeah, maybe.
Hopefully, though, it's just the slowing down that's doing it. Because I can do that anytime. Right?
xxx c
Image by skippyjohn via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.