In which I’m sick and also annoyingly perky

I’m sick. I don’t know if it’s a cold or the flu or maybe something similar that causes me to sit down in the shower to avoid blacking out from fever.

The timing is kind of crappy. I got sick the night before I flew to Telluride. For work. For the production thing I do sometimes in addition to my coaching thing. And production … um, yeah. The production world is kind of big on working hard. There’s this euphemism they like to use for working around the clock: they call it industry hours. It means we head out to location a couple of hours before sunrise and call it a night right before morning. Did I mention that I’m sick?

Whatever I have is hyper-contagious and I’m basically quarantined in the hotel to protect everyone else here. Cabin fever doesn’t begin to describe spending all day in my dingy room. In Telluride. In Autumn. Oh man. And I was actually feeling much better today than yesterday. But then I accidentally exhausted myself by doing something strenuous like, I don’t know, sitting up for too long.

Oh the boredom. I drove to the last shoot and brought no less than 12 books and didn’t have time to read anything. I flew to this shoot and had room for only one book. Big mistake. Next time, less warm clothes (it’s only supposed to snow one of the days), and more books (priorities, you know?).

So in all of my boredom and feverish delirium, I’m asking myself a new favorite question I keep hearing some of my favorite people use: What’s perfect about this situation?

I don’t know about you, but when I’m sick I tend to feel all delicate and fragile and pathetic. And asking this kind of question sets your brain on a far kinder mission to look for positive evidence of good things rather than seeking out clues that the sky is falling. As always, asking this question won’t help if you end up turning the idea into a should, as in: What the hell is wrong with me? I should be able to see the benefits of my raging fever and hacking cough. So, you know, only use it if it helps.

Specifically, what’s perfect about getting sick right now?

1. I got to participate in coaching group call today I otherwise would have missed.

2. I’m writing this blog post in which I nag you to get lots of rest and take vitamins and eat healthy and wash your hands neurotically.

3. I now know for sure that I haven’t been missing anything on daytime television. At least not on the 7 channels I get in my hotel room.

4. I usually spend the whole time on a shoot obsessed with avoiding getting sick, because, well, lack of sleep is kind of my achilles heel. But this time: been there, done that. So I can just embrace the exhaustion. 

5. Two words: blog archives. Catching up on all sorts of stuff I’ve missed from my favorites. Seriously, hooray.

6. I got an awesome reminder of my work ethic. The fact that I usually work my ass off makes being stuck in my room easier to bear. Because even though I wish I were working and contributing to the project, I know that the producer knows that I’m sick and not just shirking.

7. This really weird moment of clarity in which I welcome viral or bacterial yuckiness in an e-mail to my mom (yes, I e-mail my mom when I’m sick):

Anyway, I’m hoping that whatever I have is bacterial so that these antibiotics will help and also so that I’m not taking antibiotics unnecessarily. Although if it were the flu, that would build up my antibodies for this flu season which is supposed to be pretty yucky. So either way, win-win.

And there we have the annoyingly perky part. I think I need to go lie down now. Vitamin up.