I tend to assume a lot of things about my skills and abilities in general. Like that time I took tennis lessons.
I’m a pretty fit and active person, so I just assumed I’d channel my inner Serena Williams and kick ass at it.
I enjoy books, movies and music as much as the next person, but somewhere along the way, I got out of the habit of taking part in pop culture trends as they happen.
(Case in point, I’m only just now watching the 2004 remake of Battlestar Galactica).
Blogging has changed since the last time I did it during the dark ages of the internet in 2006.Today we have the integrated blog stats that WordPress so thoughtfully provides us all, informing me at a glance how many clicks I’ve received per day and what the clickers were clicking on and where the clickers came from, both geographically and via the internet.
We have “Likes”, which on all but the most popular blogs have replaced the standard comments of yesteryear. There were no such thing as Likes in 2006. If you liked something someone wrote, you would tell them by leaving a comment and let them know what exactly you liked about it.
(Not that I’m at all complaining: the world is a much busier place than it was in 2006, and comments take time to compose while Likes are quick and dirty. I’m grateful to know at all when stuff I write resonates with people.)
We also now have blog subscribers, which I love love love, both having them and to be one. There was nothing more annoying back in 2006 than to have to constantly check your favourite blogs for updates, especially for writers who posted multiple times a day.
And yet, despite all these innovations for tracking one’s visitors, I still have no idea who is reading my blog, and perhaps more importantly, how they’re doing so.
Two weeks ago, I was sick.This, for me, is a rare occurrence. I take my health, fitness, and diet very seriously, and am also just naturally blessed with an ironclad constitution.
As a result, the minor aches, coughs, and sniffles that many people suffer every other month do not afflict me. I don’t even really get monthly menstrual cramps.
What I do get is one major illness every year to year-and-a-half that takes me down for about a week despite my prideful efforts to fight it.
That’s what this recent illness was: it started off as a sore throat, quickly progressed to a hacking cough, and before I could say, “I’m fine,” I had a full-blown head cold complete with cement-filled sinuses, pounding temples, aching neck, shoulders, back and abs from coughing, throat scratched raw from the same, tiredness, weakness, and about as much air capacity in my lungs as if I were breathing through a straw, particularly when trying to lie in bed.
I was not fine.
And the thing that hurt the most was my ego in having to admit to my malady.
It was a low moment. So low, in fact, my body became a metaphor for my mental state: bypassing my bed entirely, I spread a blanket on my living room floor, brought my laptop down with me, and searched for something to watch on YouTube to distract me from my misery.
A Frame Around Infinity 