Wednesday, September 15, 2010. 28 years, 51 weeks, 1 day.
Wednesday started before I intended it to. I awoke over and over through the night, seemingly never completely asleep.
It’s the season for it – the two weeks of fall where my allergies activate overnight. Whether dream or reality, it seemed like I was reawakening multiple times each minutes, sniffling and coughing. Once – or, maybe multiple times? – I shambled to the bathroom to swallow a decongestant, hoping it would take the edge off my misery.
I felt like miles of bad road by the time I officially “awoke,” though I’m not convinced I was ever completely asleep. For a moment I had the phone in my hand, considering calling out, but it wasn’t worth the misery of a double-hard day on Thursday leading up to my gig.
I hit my desk feeling like death warmed over. I must have looked the part too, because none of my co-workers offered any words of encouragement.
What one of them did offer was an iced coffee. This was both a solution and a problem. Like a Mogwai noshing after midnight, I am typically restricted from coffee at work because me and caffeine is a dangerous mix. I turn into a legit Gremlin.
Seriously, me and a 12-ounce coffee is like most people and a rail of cocaine. I get deliriously, uncontrollably, excitable. My words come out faster than I can think them. I pace, scribble notes, and jab things with my pen. It’s like normal me with some 9-volt batteries shoved in all of my orifices.
Thanks to that I somehow made it through the day, which included a rehearsal for our charity campaign talent show. It’s all a blur, honestly. I just have the accounts of eye-witnesses, whose description of me sounds like a they’re trying to explain the Looney Tunes Tasmanian Devil to someone who has never seen a cartoon..
Late in the day I checked my email to discover E had called off our acoustic Filmstar rehearsal on account of feeling sick. I think she faked it for me. I had told her how I was sputtering and weak-voiced all day, and E knew I’d be pulling an all-nighter if we did rehearse.
Or maybe she was sick. Who knows.
At home with the night to myself I focused on the two things I absolutely could not put off any longer – gig reminders to people likely to come and the music mixes for our campaign at work.
I realized, belatedly – around 11pm – that I hadn’t done laundry in over a week and lacked all of the clothes I had planned to wear for our Tin Angel show. Also, I had never sent a message to our mailing list. More sacrifices my big gig made to the rest of my life.
If I was a real musician, I wouldn’t have let anything get in the way of doing either of those things. I’d be burning CDs to give away at the gig rather than CDs for work, but that would leave dozens of people in a lurch.
Now far on the opposite side of midnight I finished the last work CD, checked my hastily-assembled bag of cables and clothes one last time, and begrudgingly called it a night.
I drifted off wondering when all that freelance writing would get done. I’d given up on the illusion of lunch breaks, but maybe I could squeeze in a thousand words at the Tin before the gig?