Voiceless

So I'm down with some variant of illness. Again.

I've been on-and-off sick for almost three weeks now, with a second wave of "seriously bad" having hit me this Monday. The first time it was serious, I completely missed out on five days of school, and it seems like I'm going to miss this week as well.

And, as a side effect, I have no voice. None. I can cough up a few syllables, but anything I try to say beyond that just - nothing comes out. I've now spent almost 48 hours in near-complete silence. It's an interesting experience, actually, not being able to communicate except through charades. It's a good thing I have kind of an expressive body language, although when push comes to shove I have to write most things I want to convey.

As an even nastier side effect, I'm lagging behind with school worse than I ever have in my entire life. I'm talking to my student councillor now about dropping one of my subjects, because there's no way in the Nine Hells I'm going to pass it (the course book sucks, and I've gone to a total of three lectures out of 14), plus I still have three other subjects to balance - and I have Chinese. To add insult to injury, I've been more-or-less voiceless every weekend save one, so I haven't played any RPG's in three weeks now and once I get well, I will only have minimal time for that since I have so much catching up to do.

So yeah, I'm in a terrible situation right now, but I'm making the best of it. I'm sitting around at home watching Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann and German documentaries, converting D&D-characters into Exalted characters, playing Peggle and generally wasting my time. A few years ago, I would look at such a situation and say, "Sweet!"

Sadly, I'm no longer that person. I need to have something useful to do. I need to feel like I'm making progress, like I'm learning or developing, or I get insanely restless. It's nice to relax, but I'm starting to get rather tired of it.