Artwork tonight by Dexter A. Dickinson. Again, a piece oozing with story. A derelict rocket on an alien planet. What happened? It obviously landed and never took off again…

Reading my blogs from last year, it was today TO THE DAY that I started having a chest cough. I don’t know if a chest cough is different than any other kind of cough…it just felt right to type. I have it tonight. For reals. I just took cough medicine for it.

How messed up is that? To the day. It has to be allergy related. Something blooms this time of year, and it fucks me up. I’m going to try and head this thing off. It hasn’t really gotten bad yet, maybe I still have time. Otherwise, all that resting and pre-planning for down time to start the year is really for naught. I just end up sick like I did last year, and missing work days.

Really, I’m just going to try and be more proactive on the drug side of things. Try to look up what I can do to boost my immune system and reduce symptoms. That’s really all I can do. See if it works. If it doesn’t…well, I have no control over that, do I?

I’m going to work as much as I can. I got writing done today. I slept. The fatigue is tough, but I’ll just do my best. At least try to spend less time worrying about things and whether not I’ll get enough done. I will. There’s no point in fretting over it. Which I suppose is what I’m doing right now 😛 But, this, I think has to be allowed. Where else but here is as perfect the time and place to pour all these worrisome thoughts out so I don’t have to carry them around all the time? No place, I say! No place better!

Honestly, it doesn’t feel too bad right now. I woke up feeling better today than I did yesterday, and that’s the right direction to be moving in. It’s just this cough tonight that sucks. But ya, I’ll just have to see how I feel tomorrow, that’s all there is to it.

I watched The Other Shore today, which is the story of Diana Nyad trying to swim from Cuba to Florida in one go. At the age of 60. It’s pretty freaking intense, and it’s a documentary I highly HIGHLY recommend for anyone who struggles to reach their dreams, or any big goal that can seem impossibly out of reach. That woman is perhaps the most incredible person I have ever watched fighting to not give up, to keep going. To keep going even after failure after failure. I don’t know if I’ve ever really had a role model or a hero, but Diana Nyad might be it. And I don’t mean that flippantly. I really mean it. It brought me to tears this morning on my couch watching her try so hard and fail and then try so hard again and again. In case you didn’t know…she did it finally. It took her five tries and four years, but she finally did it.

I also finished The Moon is a Harsh Mistress today, which was likewise pretty fucking cool. It definitely won me over in the last half of the book (give or take). Took a long freaking time to get there, but by the end it was FINALLY interesting enough to make me want to turn those pages as quick as I could and find out what was going to happen. I read somewhere that it was a book of an author “at the heigh of his powers and editorial influence”…which I think they very correctly meant that the book was published with no one daring to tell Heinlein that he needed to edit that shit down. Or, if anyone *did* tell him that, Mr. Robert A told them to suck it and he got it published his own way. The result is a book whose first half should have been cut in half. But…it did deliver in the end, I’ll give it that.

Finally, the Ho and I sat down to eat some food and we watched the animated movie Epic from early last year. It has some really incredible parallels with a story idea I have I think for my next novel. Not even “think,” it’s like 99% decided that’s what’s happening. But ya…STRIKING similarities. Unnerving, even. But I legitimately had no idea what this movie was about beyond seeing the movie posters for it last year, and then seeing a clip of it about a week ago and deciding I should record it. Apparently it’s based of a kids book. Haven’t even heard of it. But, I have now, and if I’m going to be biting someone’s work, I might as well read it so I can bite properly and make my shit different in significant ways.

Anywho, that’s all for tonight. Here’s to fighting symptoms!