Friday Morning part I: Snuffles and Sniffles

And as the last coughs are being dragged from my shrivelled lungs like porcupines through my throat, and the veil of mucus that hung heavily over my head, and the last of the sweat droplets begin to dry (I really should have a shower) against my skin in places that I can’t even Mitchum, and as the well of thick saliva begins to dissipate from its previously established home at the back of my mouth, I am almost, almost, well again.

Over the last week I have expelled more unsightly products from every pore in my body than I thought previously possible. Sweat, mucus, dry throaty coughs attacking like daggers and then the odd cough laden with all sorts of fun stuff, saliva, and generally illness has radiated from every cell.

I had not been well prior to Christmas. I had taken a few days off to get myself right although, in true WebStress fashion, these rest days were harnessed to work my arse off producing Christmas materials for a company that were never used for a stream of highly ridiculous reasons that if I go into I might induce a cardiac arrest*.

*If you can’t see the bitter undertones I’ve added them in here.

Then Christmas came and I opened my arms to the much anticipated lie-ins and warmth and comfort and cosiness and general pampering that such festive period usually induces.

So, the day after Boxing day I packed up the car and headed oop North, feeling refreshed but a little off colour, presumably down to various things that weren’t WebStress friendly that I munched under the guise of it being Christmas and all that, or one glass of wine too many the night before.

By the time I reached the M60 on the South West side of Manchester, things weren’t looking at all pretty. I had nearly had to phone my boyfriend to come and rescue me but I managed, feeding Newfy in the back any food that I couldn’t stomach (she seems to be a Marmite girl which has thrilled me and disgusted my boyfriend, although she does like eating a variety of excrement but I won’t try and draw any parallels).

I arrived at my boyfriend’s sister’s house feeling slightly like the undead and crawled grumpily into bed to try and sleep off what I assumed was just exhaustion and a sore throat from trying to sing the high notes that Fiona Apple can get and I can only dream of.

Over the next few days, through visits to see my SP and her fiancée, through nights out, through dog walks, I was not well. I was really not very well at all.

New Year came and, while the house was a flurry of activity, my boyfriend’s sister (for want of a better name, as it really is a bit of a textual mouthful to write every time) tucked me into the electronic-relaxing-thingy-chair with a blanket and I wallowed in my own self pity as productivity exploded around me.

I made it. I made it not just to Big Ben, but to 2am.

This there began my downfall in earnest.

I had been fighting off what I assumed to be a nasty cold. I had dosed myself up with drugs, I had fought, I had succumbed to sleep when I could, I had fought the pain in the night, the grasping for air and the needles in my throat.

We drove home from the north and all was not how it should have been deep within the WebStress. All was not so well in fact that I spent the subsequent days in bed, feeling rather sorry for myself.

So now, after my first day back at work being so unproductive yesterday that it took me 3 hours to produce some, lets face it, damn near appalling banner ads, with a feeling that if I look at them in the cold light of day, like a drunken genius observing their catastrophic production the sober morning after, I would not like what I saw very much. I passed them over to my junior before I collapsed yesterday afternoon, and haven’t heard back since.

This morning I woke exhausted but with the absence of the headache that has nearly reduced me to tears on previous mornings. I am sat here, still hacking occasionally, still sweating (although this might not actually be down to being ill now…), still not quite right, in the first day of what I believe may be wellness.

This was not how I wanted to start 2007. I had delusions of grandeur. This was going to be my year. I was going to grab January by the horns and shake it until its innards collapsed and I was able to walk across the defeated beast that is the first month of the year triumphant in my achievements.

One laughable resolution was that I was going to look less like a tramp and more like someone my boyfriend wanted to have a relationship with when he came home from work on an evening. Yes I work from home but scutter is not an alternative word for attractive and alluring partner. I was going to brush my hair on a morning, have a shower to invigorate me (and take away that morning smell which at least Newfy seems to not abide), perhaps put on some makeup, choose items of clothing that didn’t make me look like a small, overweight, pregnant 12 year old (I’ve seen them. I know).

Another was that I was going to not complain about clients and client related work to people in work. So far I have achieved this bar one small incident when I said something wholly not very nice about a client idea yesterday and then back peddled so dramatically that I ended up being a little bit patronising. My achievement may be largely to do with the fact that it wasn’t very easy for me to speak yesterday and so far I have only endured 8 hours of work in January.

Another was my journeys to London that I was going to at least accept, if not rejoice about. Again and again, in pubs with old friends, in conversations with those old friend’s parents over Christmas, people asked me about my job. I work from home. Yes, yes, on a London weighting. Hours? I work 8 til 4. Yes it does suit me rather well really. I can look after Newfy and my commute is all of 30 seconds. Visits to London? Oh twice a month. Yes, yes, only twice a month. And the people I work with? Lovely, yes lovely. I suppose that is rather a good deal really isn’t it.

I was supposed to go to London today but due to my illness this has been postponed until Monday. Resolution pending.

The Joe Typical resolutions include being more organised, keeping tax money in an account for tax and not a new car, filing my return in April not a year later when I can’t remember anything, reducing the amount of freelance work I do, starting a business, buying a house and being less stressed.

Yep, notice how I slipped that one in there.

I am wondering what my name would be if I was no longer stressed. Just Web? WebJoy? WebJubilation? WebFunAndFrolics? Hmm.

As my mother would (and frequently does) say about me: I stress because I care, I stress because I worry too much – about what other people think, about how other people feel, I want to achieve too much, because I don’t think I’m very good.

My last and probably toughest one to sort out would essentially irradiate the latter, for at least the most part. My mother usually accompanies the stress related lines with a comment or two about how I’m taking too much on, or I’m overdoing it.

I think essentially I will probably always struggle with a balance of not ‘overdoing it’. But at least I could stop overdoing it about bloody web design.