Jenna's House of Idiosyncrasies Version 10.0 [Focus.]

I'm not feeling all that great, Internet. The past few weeks I've been focused on my own broken heart, and I've been working in an unenthusiastic way, not concentrating as easily or finishing as fast as I have in the past. I also think I was probably due for a little bit of burn out, considering the pace I've been keeping and the stress that never goes away. So I slept a lot (I told some people whose calls I didn't answer that I “took a coma”), I stared at the TV a lot, I smoked a lot.

This week, however, I was ready to pull myself back up and pour myself into my work once more. I got a pep talk from my mentor, who has been through all the same things. Yesterday afternoon, after hitting the proverbial wall trying to make progress on an overdue project for weeks, the universe gave me a break and I was able to start moving forward. I was so excited to be back on track.

Then, the setback. Yesterday evening I had a sore throat and some sneezing, today it has turned into a full blown cold, the kind with dizziness and lightheadedness and permanently chapped lips. I have a headache, I can't breathe, and most devastating, I can't think clearly at all. Right now my mind is a big marshmallow when it comes to tackling the hard techie stuff.

There is something horribly unjust about getting a cold in the dead middle of the summer. On the one hand, it does prove what I was always trying to tell my mother when I was a teenager — that leaving the house with wet hair in the winter is not what makes you sick. On the other hand, why now? When the weather is perfect and people are having parties and my professional queue has been backed up for weeks? Why not in the giant holes of time I had last November or February? In the winter, when it makes sense? That's all I ask.

I know I'm not eloquent today. I'm just grumpy.

“Aw, you know you loved it.”

“Well of course I did. But it's not the same when there's no conclusion to the whole thing. I just got so wound up.”

“It's different for women though.”

“That's the thing, he was right there with me, if you know what I mean.”

“Huh.”

“He was in the bathroom for like 5 minutes afterward though.”

“I see.”

“He came to a conclusion on his own, didn't he?”

“Oh yeah, definitely.”

“Dammit. You know what really sucks? I haven't had a decent conclusion since that morning.”

“Ou, that's rough.”

“I know. right? It's like I got rewired or something. I used to be, like, master of my own conclusions!”

“The first two syllables of that phrase being the operative ones.”