Illness
I’m sick again. I somehow managed to contract both strep and the flu at the same time! As someone who gets strep almost every single year, I expected that, but flu too? What a time to be alive!
I have an incredibly bad immune system. So bad, that it’s almost shocking to me if I don’t at least get some sort of cold every month. From all this experience, I have a pretty consistently successful way to prevent a slight sniffle from turning into a full-blown cold. The ideal solution involves lots of Airborne, honey and ginger, way more water than usual, and around 10 hours of sleep. Of course, this time it didn’t really work out.
The big struggle with being sick is that for some reason, the symptoms take over your memory, and you almost struggle to remember what it’s like to be healthy. Whenever I get over an illness, I always spend the first minute thinking, “I need to appreciate how good being able to breathe through my nose is.” And I never do. Another classic part of being sick is how much time you have. Because of your illness, you tend to cancel a lot of your day-to-day activities to prevent spreading your illness or to make room for resting. When you have all this time, it seems like an opportunity to do all sorts of things, like work out and reinvent the world completely. Everything seems doable until the reality sets in that sniffling every five seconds makes focusing on anything impossible and instead you end up spending your whole day in bed watching videos of strangers trying new foods.
It’s particularly weird to be sick so early in the semester and so early in the year. While I was already in the midst of falling back on my new habits and routines, it almost feels like this sickness is a chance for me to start over once I get healthy. Having this double illness reminds me that there’s a lot more I can be doing for my physical health, and those steps could keep me from being in this situation again.
Drops of the Week
where I *drop* recommendations of cool things this week
Album
“All the Light Above It Too” by Jack Johnson - Jack Johnson’s been one of my favorite artists since I was small and I recently realized that he released a new album this year! It’s pretty good if you need to relax.
Short Film
“Something About Silence” - super weird and super creepy experimental short film about self help, hypnosis, and productivity through an odd mixed-media, narrator-based format.
Longread
“What Are You?” by Valerie Vande Panne - an excellent essay about a rather strange case of lost identity, race and culture. (also linking to someone’s wordpress blog feels so intimate and early internet - I’m delighted by it!)
Thanks so much for reading! If you have any comments/concerns or fan/hate mail for me, you know how to reach me (links below). Feel free to forward this newsletter to your friends too! :~)
Love,
Nikhil