Performing with a Low Battery

I'm sick.

Though it doesn't happen often, every so often something grabs me and the last few days I've been afflicted with flu-like symptoms—occasional fever, elevated mucous, lethargy, and coughing. Lots of coughing. The worst bouts are when I get up in the morning, just after eating, and when I'm trying to settle down in bed each night. Poor Ma'ikwe is condemned to having a seat in the orchestra pit for my diurnal expectoral performances. She doesn't miss a single note.

While I don't think she minds a certain amount of playing Florence Nightengale, for the most part I don't think this is what she had in mind in asking me over for the winter.

Because I have a strong constitution (read deep reserves) and don't suffer being sick very well (I have a bad attitude about it), I can still handle most tasks on my To Do List (how much energy does it take to tap a keyboard, anyway?) my qi is definitely diminished, which affects my stamina and eliminates from consideration the more strenuous items on my work menu (such as chopping wood and hauling water). It just means going slower, and making sure I have plenty of fluids and rest.

It occurred to me this morning (metaphors are like that for me—I can't turn them off) that my health has an analog with the bank of deep cell batteries connected to Ma'ikwe's solar panel array. On good days (read sunny) the system generates more power than is drawn down and the surplus is stored in the batteries (unless they're already topped off, in which case the extra is spilled).

Kind of like Homeland Security (which, I suppose, is one way of looking at what the batteries represent) Ma'ikwe assigns colors to different ranges of battery power, expressed as a percentage of full capacity, with user guidelines associated with each color:
Green 88-100% all ahead full; do whatever
Yellow 76-87% limited use of power tools
Orange 64-75% unplug the refrigerator overnight; laptops used for work only
Red 52-63% use laptops for no more than 90 min/day; conservative light usage
Black under 52% shut 'er down; think cavemen

I figure we all use a system like this when thinking about personal health—though we may not agree on the color assignments (I know some people who are definitely into periwinkle), and it's clear that there's considerable variation in people's battery capacity, as well as in their recharging rates.

Haven't we all had orange days, where we're not officially wearing the label "sick," yet are clearly limping along? Here's the way I'd map the battery codes onto human robustness:

Green everything in play
Yellow minor debilitation; passes up only the most taxing opportunities
Orange significant slow down, yet still completing most tasks; extra rest advisable
Red normal work mostly suspended; lots of time in bed or on the couch
Black that's what hospitals are for

People could wear colored tags around their neck to give passersby a quick visual on how they'd respond the ubiquitous query, "How're ya doing?"

Then, instead of writing this blog, I could just post: "I'm feeling orange today, with decent prospects for a yellow Thursday." But that would take all the green out of the joy I derive from writing about color changes, which evokes dark red feelings.

The Impatient Patient

For about a month now, people had been succumbing all around me to some virulent strain of what my father used to refer to as "the creeping crud" (a cold and flu combo deal) that was laying people low in droves. Michael—one of my fellow Sandhillians—was hit especially hard and was down for about a month. There was nothing about his experience that made me envious, and I was simply glad it wasn’t me. More commonly people had a hard week. Somehow though, I was escaping it—until Sunday.

Despite a steady diet of zinc lozenges (my standard prophylactic against colds), down I went. The good news was that it was a travel day (the sickness held off until I had completed my two days of workshops for the student groups in Kalamazoo and I wasn’t needed on stage again until the following Friday). Unfortunately, that was also the bad news. While I typically look forward to the rhythmic jostling of rail travel, it was not nearly as much fun with a stuffed head.

In Chicago for a couple hours around noon to change trains, I had just enough down time (and residual energy) to bang out the last blog in my series on Economic Leverage in Hard Times… and then I was done for the day. To compound my misery, I was shunted into a passenger car that offered no access to an electric plug and I was facing the prospect of a 54-hour journey without hope of pushing back the ever-rising tide of electrons that flood my In Box. It’s in moments like that that I can start to understand depression.

In the morning however, things got better. After sauntering over to the Tattered Cover (a local, thriving indie bookstore on the corner of 16th & Wynkoop, just catty corner from Union Station in downtown Denver) and stoking up on a triple latté (a person can only indulge in sickness so long), I purposefully strode back to the train and negotiated a change of seats into the next car, which had electric plugs at every seat. Sure I was still sick, but who’s got time for that shit?

While I was still not working at full speed, at least I was working. Intermingled with doing the Sunday New York Times Magazine crossword, reading chapters of Elizabeth Arthur’s Antarctic Navigation (a novel inspired by Robert Scott’s tragic and fateful march to the South Pole in 1912—a fair example of what Annie used to describe as my fetish with “freezing and starving” books), gnoshing on high-end delicacies secured at Zingerman’s world-class deli Friday morning en route to Kalamazoo, and indulging in the occasional nap, I started making a dent in my email traffic. And that’s almost as good a mood elevator as sex (though not quite).

The truth is, I make a terrible patient. I can handle it for about a day and then things had better change, or somebody is going to be sorry. My getting that seat with an electric was good for everyone on board. Not counting this blog entry (which I’m crafting as we pull out of Sacramento for the last two hours of the trip), I’ve banged out 24 emails since finding the Write Stuff yesterday morning, including four hours today spent editing minutes from a conference call Sat afternoon. Yeehah!

What will happen if I get really sick, and maybe have to cancel a consulting gig? I hope to never find out. And neither do you.