It's Friday evening, and I'm sitting at the work-desk of my mate Mike, whose house I am staying in while I am up in Johannesburg visiting my children.  He's gone away for the weekend, and the other folk who were supposed to be here have not arrived yet.  So it's just me!  It feels a little strange to be a visitor in a friend's house without them being there, and fetching the keys from my ex and then leaving was harder for me than I thought it would be.  The worst was saying hello to the children and then having to leave again straight away (my lift was waiting.)  Anyway, I'm sure it will feel much better tomorrow once I've settled in and spent some time with them.

 

I must say I'm amused at Mike's computer - it seems every time I use it (about once every six months,) he has managed to slow it down to a crawl.  So I reorganise things, kill programs that shouldn't be running and generally clean up.  When I leave it will be cruising, but right now it's a dog!  Lucky for him he has a friend in IT...

 

I also wanted to connect my laptop to his hub, only to find that the hub has left, and all I can find are a few network cables.  No wireless in this house!  When I spoke to him last he said the hub was in the bottom draw of his desk, but I can tell you that although there are many, many things in the bottom draw, his hub is not one of them.  I guess it'll turn up in due course!

 

One last thing:  A friend of mine sent me a text message to day to ask if I was ok (she hadn't heard from me since Wednesday, and I found out later that she'd sent an email yesterday as well.)  I was touched to know that there are others thinking about my welfare even when I am not in contact.  Just goes to show that your friends are always there, even when you think you are alone. 

Where I work we have an issue tracking system to allocate and prioritise the work we need to get done.  Usually I sit with around twenty tasks pending, and it seldom drops below that because the twenty are usually tasks that will take a while to complete.  I am taking aweek off next week, and of course I want to leave with the minimum of work outstanding because my client gets uptight when there is too much outstanding at any given time.

 

So I'm sure you can imagine my frustration when the tasks began pouring in last week Thursday.  At first I just knuckled down and got more stuff fone as quickly as possible, but with any intensely focused work, one can only keep a cracking pace up for a little while.  The volume of incoming tasks has not subsided since then, with a steady stream coming in every day since.  I'm now up to 43 tasks and it doesn't look like slowing down!

 

How's that for irony!  It's almost like my users sense that I am going to be away and try to stop me leaving by overloading me with work.  Anyway, work or no work, I am leaving for Johannesburg on Friday, and anything not done by then is just going to have to wait a week!  Perhaps that will give the users some time to think about whether all the tasks they asked for were really necessary, and perhaps they might have made a plan with some of them so that the really urgent could get done.  Probably not, but I can always hope!

 

Next week is going to be an interesting one:  I will be staying at a friend's place and collecting my children from my ex-wife's place each day.  I'm still not sure if I will have a car available to me, so I can't really make any firm plans, but there will definitely be some cycling, some board games a tickle session or two!  Car-hire rates in South Africa are ridiculously expensive, so I will have to make do without one most of the time.

 

Tomorrow I have an appointment with the ear, nose and throat specialist, and I'm hoping he will have some sage advice to share, and perhaps a plan for some kind of lasting solution to my health woes.  At least I'm currently feeling a lot better than I have in the last few weeks.  I'm really hammering home the vitamins at the moment, and being extraordinarily well behaved in terms of staying home and recuperating instead of going out late on weekends.

 

The problem with staying home is that all work and no play makes Steve a dull boy.  Anyway, hopefully it will all be worth it in the end.

It's Tuesday evening and I've just arrived home from having dinner with my folks.  We've been trying to make a habit of dinner on Tuesday evenings to keep in touch.  Now that my brother has left home too, my folks are feeling a little isolated, so we're trying our best to stay in reasonably close contact.

 

I'm listening to "Outrospective" by Faithless, and having not heard it for a while, I'm really enjoying the music!  This stuff is not everyone's cup of tea, but I just love it.  It's very electronic and sometimes borders on dance, but it's both poignant and sad at times, with thought provoking lyrics.

 

Music has always been my first love.  Whenever I feel down or really tired, I get out one or two good albums and position myself strategically on my back on the carpet, between all the speakers of my sound system.  And then I settle down for a journey into my own mind ... my thoughts follow their own paths while the music plays.  It's a higher state of being for me, and I always feel energised afterward.

 

I'm thinking back as I relax into the silky sounds of the synth, and I wonder if there is anyone who feels quite the way I do about my music.  Most people I know just don't get it, they would rather watch a show on TV or be doing something "concrete,"  but I get lost in the sound.  Sometimes, when I need some energetic release, I go to an old haunt called "The Corner House."  The dance floor is almost totally dark, and the music is usually a fantastic blend of mostly non-commercial stuff.  There you can really let yourself move in whatever way takes your fancy.

 

Thank heavens for music.

Ok, I know I've been away for a while, and yes, it's mostly because I've been feeling really ill so I've taken sleep in favour of blogging.  I'm probably still going to do that for a week or two because I need to kick this thing!

 

I've been to the doctor again, and he sent me for a limited CAT scan of my sinuses, and a pathology on my mucous.  The results came back today:  The pathology analysis indicates that there is no current infection, but the CAT scan shows large amounts of mucous blocking my sinus cavities.  The doctor reckons the problem is not new, and my current woes are the result of a long period of build up.

 

The current prognosis is that I will need to see an Ear, Nose and Throat specialist, and he may want to do some digging inside my head.  That remains to be seen because I still need to set up an appointment with him.

 

So where am I right now?  Well, I have felt progressively better during the week and I'm hoping that the cold/flu symptoms may be coming to an end.  I'm not convinced though because I'm not feeling fantastic right now.  At least there is no fever!

 

You might infer from all of this that I'm in a pretty morbid place, but that's actually not true.  I don't feel very well, but emotionally I'm fine and all I really want right now is to be over this bout of illness so I can get on with my life.  My biggest problem is that I can't afford to take time off to recover properly, so I have to keep soldiering on.

 

I have an extremely important business decision pending, and I need to make the right choice.  There is an offer of a merger on the table for my company, and although the terms are not completely to my liking, there is potentially much growth to be realised by goind ahead with it.  Still, I'm not sure what God wants me to do, so I haven't given them an answer yet.  Anyone who reads this an has some divine inspiration, please let me know ...

I feeling really sorry for myself today.  I have yet another illness, call it a cold if you will.  It started on Tuesday and I hoped that it might manifest as a minor sore throat and then disappear again.  No such luck.  It has progressed steadily, despite my ministrations with decongestant spray and large doses of vitamin C.  From this morning I've been running a temperature, and although I not feeling completely floored, I'm along way from healthy.  I'm suffering rebound congestion as well, despite following the decongestant instructions to the letter.

 

I think the last time I was ill so often in one year was when I was nineteen, and my tonsils were poisoning my system!  A rather painful operation sorted that out, and I was much healthier almost immediately.  It's seventeen years later now, and once again I'm suffering from reapeated bouts of cold-like symptoms and general malaise.  Perhaps my short holiday from the 23rd will help, but I think it's going to be fairly emotionallay stressful, so I'm not convinced.

 

Being ill constantly sucks.  Eventually those around you run out of sympathy and they just want you to get sorted out.  Easier said than done.  I suppose my next stop is the doctor ... again.  I have my reservations though, that will most probably lead to tests, and then further medication and more tests, and then my health insurance will run out and I'll end up having to work extra hard to pay the bills while still trying to recover.  Of course that might not happen, perhaps the doctor will know what to do straight away and I'll be sorted out pronto.  Who knows.

 

Anyway, the upshot of all of this is that I'm sitting in bed on a Friday afternoon, bored out of my skull with no prospects of a night out any time soon.  I wish this body of mine would shake off the illnesses and get on with recovery.  Enough is enough.

Have you ever tried to fly a kite when the wind is too light?  You run around all over the place trying to get it high enough off the ground to catch a breeze higher up, but some days there is just too little wind.  Sometimes my life goes like that, and today there just wasn't enough wind to get me off the ground!  I wouldn't say that I'm badly depressed - I just can't seem to get any enthusiasm going.

 

I flew back from Johannesburg last night, after spending a wonderful weekend with my children, so perhaps I'm just feeling a little down about being back in the day-to-day grind.  The postive side is that I'll be with them again within three weeks, so all is not gloom!  Still, today has just not been a fun day for me.

 

I find it interesting too, how things that normally wouldn't get you down seem so much bigger when you're already feeling fragile.  I normally don't take too much notice of what is going on around me at work, but today the inane chatter was just too much for me.  Please believe I am not trying to sound self-righteous here, but most people seem to be completely self-absorbed, completely caught up in their tiny worlds of planning their next big purchase or holiday or dinner party or who knows what else.  The list of "me" things seems to be endless!

 

God told me clearly recently that I am too materialistic, and He even pointed me to the the rich young ruler mentioned in Matthew 19: 16-23!  I've tried not to focus on things material, but when a wise and gentle soul mentioned that she had a word for me from God, I knew straight away that it was true, and that it was from God.  I attach far too much self-worth to material goods - I need rescuing from a life of emptiness and persuit of wealth.  Ugh!  Why is it that no matter how hard I try, the evil one always seems to have something ready to trip me up with?

 

And yes - I know that I'm not supposed to become perfect without His help, but I'm not trying to!  I ask almost every day for His help, and almost every day I fall again.  Dear God - when will you hear my cries?  When will you work a change in my heart?