Life Between 0 and 1

I’ve been sick the last 6 days and finally starting to feel better.  This was a hard one this time as I had seasonal allergies on top of the usual symptoms from a cold.  The last thing I wanted to do was pick up a piece of technology let alone look at a screen, so I had an unintended disconnect from the online world.  I can’t say that it’s been all that bad, but I do feel eerily disconnected from a lot more than just technology.  The last 6 days I’ve done hardly anything other than lay around and binge watch (then watch again after falling asleep) some older shows.

It’s going to take me a few days to get back into the normal routine as I’ve returned to work today after a few days suffering.  My usual thing is to work from home during a sickness, but my aversion to anything technology forced me to just take the time.  After more than a year at my current job and taking almost no sick time, I’ve accrued quite a bit of it according to my last pay stub.  I said screw it, I’m taking sick time because they are giving it to me and I really didn’t have any motivation to focus on anything.  Of all the years I’ve been in IT to some degree, I’ve rarely been so disconnected from everything; at least not without a lot of stress.  This time, no stress, not a care actually; it was quite relaxing despite having a horrible cold.

Yeah, I hear you all now, a “man-cold” isn’t serious stuff…..blah blah.  For almost two days I was at the point where the pressure in my head felt like it was going to explode and nothing helped.  Hot shower with steam, no relief.  Vicks in hot water with a towel over the head, didn’t make a dent.  Nasal decongestant spray, 12-hour no less, barely let me get through the night without getting stuffed up again.  Things were so bad at one point I almost went to the doctor, something I never do usually, because I was almost convinced that it was a sinus infection.  Well, it wasn’t and pushing through the pressure I got out on the other side and feel almost back to normal.  It bothers me that this time it didn’t have the pre-requisite two days of my throat being on fire indicating that a cold was on the way.

I have it down to get around to my normal Monday post, Three Things Thursday and hopefully I won’t miss my Weekend post.  Then again, having them down doesn’t mean they’ll get done, so no promises.  Being offline, so to speak, for a few days has me evaluating my reliance on technology in general as actually is possible to survive without being connected.  I realized this as my wife continued to use her phone after we went to bed last night and was still on it two hours later when I was woken up by the dog.  I’m not sure she got anything productive out of those two hours and I’d rather not be slave to things like that.