Author Journey (May 17, 2021)

I’m still here! However, after almost two weeks doing basically nothing, I’ve eaten into a lot of my forward planning and now find myself playing catch-up while trying to regain my stamina. COVID really sucks!

May 17, 2021

Today is day fourteen since I got the news that I had tested positive for COVID-19. Of course, that alone comes with a fair amount of stress. All too often you hear about the weird cases where it floored a perfectly healthy individual whereas for most it is little more than a bad case of the flu. I’m certainly not trying to make light of it, we’ve seen far too many people suffer far worse than I did.

For what it’s worth, this is how it affected me. On the first day, I had a sore throat and every single muscle ached. There was also a constant headache, but it was mild at that point. I had almost no energy and would have loved nothing more than to sit down and watch anime, although having two children and a puppy to look after meant that I had very little time to sit down and relax.

As I understand it, COVID-19 is a flu type virus and the worst thing is when it gets into your lungs. My family were lucky enough that we didn’t get it that bad. We were able to check our blood oxygen levels as often as we wanted to. That meant there weren’t any surprises. Now, for reference, I’ve had bronchitis before and that destroyed me. I couldn’t even walk across my apartment without getting out of breath.

The worst thing I experienced was the headache. Remember I said it was a constant mild headache at first. Well, it escalated fairly quickly and it did not go away. In fact, I still have it, although it is easing up a little. Painkillers did nothing for it either, neither did kids that had almost no symptoms and were slowly going crazy from being cooped up in a house for two weeks.

Now, when I said I did nothing, I really mean it. In a normal week, I would watch between eight and sixteen episodes of anime. These last two weeks, I managed eight total and three of those were last night. That said, I did manage to watch and review Fruits Basket. Luckily, I’m not still trying to review seven episodes a week like I did back when the pandemic started.

This week I have my review of the final episode of Record of Grancrest War and I need to find the time to watch and review the KonoSuba movie. After that, I have the first six episodes of Otherside Picnic ready to roll, however, I have nothing scheduled for after Record of Grancrest War. I do have another week with that series as I have the season review scheduled. Still, there was a point that I was almost an entire month ahead.

The hard thing at the moment is that my stamina has gone. I used to stay up late every night. It was normal for me. Since the virus, however, I have struggled to find the time and the nights are not working for me yet. I’m sure it will come back to me… in time!

So, as you probably can imagine, I have had no time to work on any of my stories. It’s frustrating for sure, but that too will return to me. Slowly but surely, this train is getting back on the tracks. I’m just glad that I have been able to keep things appearing normal these past two weeks.

I need to say a big thank you to Yomu over at Umai Yomu Anime Blog for keeping things moving over at Ecchi Hunter. Luckily, I had a load of reviews already scheduled, but the weekly posts were beyond me. I guess we’re now even from when you moved to Japan! Cheers.

And that is pretty much it. I have lots of plans, lots of anime to catch up on, and almost zero energy. I can now venture into the world again and now that I’ve had it, I have boosted my immune system. Of course, that doesn’t mean I can’t catch it again, it just means my body will know how to handle it. It’ll probably still be zero fun, so I will be continuing to keep my distance, wear my mask, and avoid people as I have been doing for the last year. Hooray for the digital world.

Anyhow, I am working my way back to full health. So, thanks for reading and stay safe.

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