When Life (i.e. Work, Infection, and the Super Bowl) Gets in the Way

My ideal situation would be to wake up at around 8ish fully refreshed from a comfortable nights sleep, to have a leisurely breakfast with my loving family, before packing the kids off to school and the wife off to work, before I settle down for 6 hours of constructive writing, after which I'd have a loving family evening meal followed by quality family time before retiring for the night.

Sound familiar? You've thought it too, huh?

Unfortunately, I haven't got that kind of life. I drag my tired soul from bed at around 7ish, have a rushed and often too-light breakfast before a quick freshen up in the bathroom then it's a boring drive to work, where I put in an 8 hour day doing something that doesn't give much satisfaction and pays less than I'd want, before driving home and eating a meal and feeling too exhausted to participate in fun family activities. Finding the time to write is another issue.

Of course, I do find the time to write, but sometimes I'm sacrificing things that maybe, in hindsight, I shouldn't.

Things then get tougher when a flu bug strikes shortly after Christmas and hangs around plaguing my waking day for a month and a half. Yes, I still have the flu bug today, and nothing I seem to do will shift it. It clogs my mind, submerges my muse under a sludge of heavy, dribbling mucus, and places bags under my eyes big enough to accomodate the purchased items from a weekend-long Paris Hilton spending spree.

Sometimes, though, I don't help myself. Sometimes I stay awake on a Sunday night until 4:15 am watching Super Bowl XLV from Arlington Texas (living in Norway can be a bitch when the sport you love is governed by American time zones) when I should be sleeping in an effort to drive this infection from my body. The fact it was a great game and that the NFC won is scant consolation to the tired numbness I feel today.

So instead of hoping for that leisurely life of easy breakfasts and 6 hours quiet time to write my books, I'm now hoping for this bloody flu to dribble itself out of my exhausted body and for my sleep tonight to be empty, peaceful, and very, very revitalizing.