Breathing
difficulties have made the last two weeks hell. The one symptom of
dermatomyositis that has largely been dormant for over a year has
returned—weak pectoral and diaphragm muscles. My breaths are once
again shallow. Working out is a chore. I wake up in the middle of
night feeling like my body is not getting enough air, like I’m
panicking, like a demon is sitting on my chest.
John Henry Fuseli’s The Nightmare illustrates what breathing difficulties while lying flat feel like for me.
Has stress inflamed
my condition? Have my medications stopped working? Have I simply
taken them too irregularly and messed up my progress?
Two business trips,
a late-night birthday bash, and attending to doctor appointments have
meant irregular schedules and interrupted circadian rhythms. I
compensate for sleepiness with caffeine. Too much caffeine keeps me
awake, creating a vicious sleep cycle. I struggle to motivate myself
to workout. Both exacerbate my symptoms.
Just doing a mild
abdominal workout took all my strength tonight. Typing out this note
has zapped what little energy I have left.
Finding motivation to write the last month has been impossible.
At work, late May
deadlines creep closer and closer. Days in the office lengthen.
Stress increases. Dates on my Outlook calendar disappear. I pine for
a vacation that seems to never come.
I want—no, I
need—time to be alone, to think, to forget everyone else’s
problems and focus on my own. I want to feel truly human, to remind
myself life has to be more than just a series of succeeding weeks at
a desk and weekends at a grocery store or a bar.
My suppressed immune
system spent the past two weeks battling a virus. I had to down
cocktails of cold medications to persevere through back-to-back
meetings, only to come home and crash on the couch to reruns of
House, MD and made-for-Netflix British teen dramas.
Motivation in pill and liquid form
Meanwhile, my body
and brain are still learning what to do on less than 10 milligrams of
prednisone. Systemic corticosteroids make me feel elated, energetic,
invincible. For almost a year, I have depended on them, in part, to
counteract the fatigue caused by an overactive immune system. As my
doctors continue to taper me off, I wonder if I have even been myself
the past year. Were the steroids the only reason I was able to
maintain a job, a side gig, a new novel, a workout regime, and a
blog?
This returning
fatigue has left me reaching for lattes, London Fogs, and liquid
energizers as I hope that maybe, just maybe I’ll find an evening or
a lunch break to pound out a paragraph or three. Hell, this lame
Saturday afternoon keyboard confessional was brought to you by
Monster Energy Ultra Violet.
Writer’s block: a psychologist’s view
When I work with
university faculty, I preach against procrastination and what
psychologist Paul Silva in How to Write a Lot calls “specious
barriers,” the excuses we make for ourselves for not writing: I
need more time. I need to do more research. I need a new computer. I
need inspiration.
Paul Silva’s How to Write a Lot is for anyone making excuses for themselves on why they can’t find the time or motivation to write. He prescribes schedules, recommends goals, and helps writers remove what he calls “specious barriers,” or excuses we make for not writing.
Silva’s solutions
are simple: Schedule the time. Do the research. Buy a new computer.
He forgives the
novelists and poets among us—our penchant for plumbing the depths
of the human soul, our unspoken goal “to move readers to tears.”
He is even so kind as to compare us to “landscape artists and
portrait painters.”
I have never been
that kind to myself. Writer’s block may be the curse of all who
seek to win with words, but I’ve never believed in curses.
Lacking inspiration? Find it, I say.
Need motivation? Brew a cup of afternoon joe.
But then again,
maybe I am too hard on myself. Cannot inspiration be found in
salacious British high-school scandals?
