It’s hot here. 37 degrees plus humidity. Sun finally beating down and I should be appropriately grateful after months and months of rain, but I’m not.
Because I have MS, and the heat means I turn into a close approximation of a three toed sloth.
I move slowly, deliberately, as if wading through jello or like I’m being created in slow motion.
My brain slows, too. I lose words and thoughts and struggle with spatial situations, get disorganized, sleep a lot.
It’s a bizarre thing to watch happen in myself, as I usually move swiftly and think fast and multitask. But I can feel it all sliding over me, caul-like, filtering the world out.
MS docs explain it in that the heat causes my itching swelling brain to become more inflamed, that as the inflammation occurs, the nerve connections start misfiring and there’s so much neural noise that conduction is slowed or misdirected. So my arm muscles twitch (ha! Effortless exercise!) and my legs kick and yet when I want them to move, there’s nothing but a quiet snickering along the lines.
It’s all good. I’ll be back to normal once it cools down a bit. But for now I exist like a car on a construction laden road – moving slowly forward, subject to frequent stops.
Tag Archives: fatigue
Overwhelmed with reading others’ writing
In Desiderata, the author tells us to avoid comparing ourselves with others as it will leave us either vain or bitter – there will always be those greater and lesser than ourselves.
How right, how true. Especially when it comes to writing.
Sometimes I wander through a bookstore or see what books are being launched every week and am humbled, defeated by all those wonderful stories out there that others are telling much better than I ever could. My writing seems unnecessary except to me, unimportant, wasteful of time and resources. My friends, when they see me in despair, say “why are you doing this, anyway?”, and then there’s always Dorothy Parker and her advice to tell budding writers to give it up while they are still happy.
I become bitter by turns, think hateful thoughts about successful authors, grumble to myself.
And then I read some stories and can feel glee and schadenfreude creeping over me.
“Oh, this is perfectly horrid,” I think. ” I KNOW I write better than THIS!”
Suddenly I feel inspired, right to write, even feel I must write if only to help repair the damage done to literature by these sloppy attempts.
I sway between these points, always awash in despair or joy. Madness.
But can I share a pet peeve?
I am so so tired of people thinking that merely putting things down on paper is writing. That it requires no practice or training or editing or research or even (gasp) reading.
Sheesh.
Sure, there’s such thing as inspiration. I have that a lot. It’s easy to come up with little ditties.
Putting together a coherent story?
Well, that takes practice and damn hard work.
I am agog with admiration at those who succeed at this. And frustrated beyond belief by people who throw a few words down on a plate like a pile of spaghetti and think they are on the same level.
Not that I haven’t done some of that myself, mind you. I apologize to all of you out there who have had to read my messes. You have my sympathy.
But hey, for a moment, didn’t you think, even to yourself, how happy you were about your writing, in contrast to mine?
Morning dawns
There’s a pinky sunrise outside my window and my iPod has played the cheery “marimba” wake-up call three times, and yet I linger in bed, unwilling to awaken.
Today is day 2 of my course and I realize I don’t want to go. I long to wallow in my comfy warm sheets, curl back into my dreams, wallow in the joy of being cozily sleepy.
I’m so lucky to have this bed, this apartment, this life. I can choose my activities, within the limits if my disability, and choose my goals.
Others don’t have the choice – their disabilities are worse, their finances are less, their ability to speak is muted.
For me, this is a call to action, to speak for those who can’t or fear to.
And so I quit my comfy warm bed and struggle upwards, knowing this class may lead to an ability to know and understand, a bit, others’ challenges. So that maybe, maybe, I can be of some help to them, sharing my luck (for that is all it is) with them until they also feel stronger.
DA's Ephemera and Etceteras 