Typing under Deaf Ears

      For the first time in my life, I had to miss a day of work due to illness. For me, it's a big deal (obviously), and I'm still a bit nervous about the whole thing. Really, it shouldn't be a big deal at all. Shouldn't it?
     I drove home on the Sixty Freeway, and everything sounded muffled. My eyes darted across the highway as I looked for any trouble. My head pounded. Burning hotter than my truck's heater, my throat lining tasted like onions.
     I got home after ten minutes, and immediately, I went to sleep. The next day came, and I had to call out. But from then on, my time in bed was spent with my typewriter or a book.
    Sick days can be argued to have been made for writers. On a weekly basis, if our schedules are busy enough, we have to fight for a chance to put pen to paper, fingers to keyboard. Writing's a career that promises to torment you if you work a ten-hour job (or are a parent).
      I pounded the keys of my fifty-year-old silent-super typewriter, striking a sheet of printer paper--silently. My ears ached. Everything had grown quieter a day after staying home. Conversations felt like shouting matches. Opening my jaw created a pop that shook my head. In a way, I liked it.
     While writing is hard to get to do on a busy schedule, it's also very hard to have peace-and-quiet.
     It's Sunday, five days after day-zero of my cold. I will be returning to work tomorrow, heavily medicated if need be, where writing will have to take the backseat. I feel better. It's not where I'd like my cold to be, but it's where it has to be. Also, my hearing is back.
     Take the time to enjoy whatever life throws at you. Good or bad, it's how we react that makes the difference. Positivity is created by us, not anyone else. By Thursday, I'll surely miss being able to type under very, very clogged ears.

Speedbumps: A Writer's Nightmare

          The last thing I remember was the plastic mask slipping over my face and the slipping of what felt like a scorpion's tail in my arm. They had asked me to sign one last waiver, and in the reclined chair, one arm hooked to a machine measuring my heart rate, everything went black as they pulled the clipboard away.
          When I woke up, I was sitting in the passenger seat of my mother's Honda Fit, holding a strawberry shake from In n Out with the lid and straw missing, blood on the cup's lip. My head throbbed. Even worse, my cheeks felt punched by the same IV that had been stapled to my arm. I felt happy. I leaned to my driver and told her thanks, that I loved her, and that In n Out was the shit.
         For the next few days, I stayed in bed with pain medicine and antibiotics at the ready. Books were thrown on the floor. I had no interest in Watership Down outside of wanting to hold a rabbit and squeeze it between jaw spasms. My mind was entirely on sleeping off the pain and medicating myself back to sleep. I still wonder if I need a slip of pills just to fall asleep.
          Everything I've worked on until this point has stopped. I have one piece moving around with my beta-readers, but it's due for submission before March. My novel hit 30,000 words a week ago. I posted on Facebook in joy, for it's an achievement I've never thought I would ever reach. Now, it feels like a past vacation that had too many good memories.
          Wisdom teeth or not, there are many reasons why writers pull away from their workload. For me, I can't handle the mix of pain and creation. Creation is birth, and while some argue that birth is pain, this birth is not. For others, the loss of a home or loved one might draw him out of his creative world. It really depends on the person; however, it's not something we surely want to explore.
          My jaws feel tender, but I can sit in a chair and read, now. The words pepper into my mind better than before. I know I should have my glasses on. The steam of a bowl of soup keeps me focused, because my mind is keeping me working for the next spoonful of noodles.
          Work will return next week, and writing will fall back into my life on weekends, days off from homework or studies, maybe. It's hard to say when those days are, but I plan to let them come, and when they do, I'll feel healthy once again.