It’s the middle of allergy season and I’ll be damned if I let the flowers beat me. I’ve spent the last 5 days so miserably sick that I’ve actually accepted that my afternoons and evenings are forfeit. I used to be stronger than this, but I’ve spent 90% of my life in a place that slowly drains the life out of you. They say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, but that’s only if it stops trying to kill you. Mother nature is pissed at me in particular and she’s not afraid to let me know. But, hey, we can’t let that stop us from moving forward, can we?

I’ve been trying for the past week to promote my blog with renewed energy. Spamming social media like no tomorrow, the only people out there who sent more useless messages out into the internet those days were probably those poor Princes in Nigeria that everyone ignores. And it worked, I saw the traffic of my site quadruple in a day and double again the next. It’s still not spectacular, mind you, but for a short time I felt like people wanted to hear what I have to say.

It reminded me what it felt like to breathe.

Remembering Fresh Air

There’s that feeling, everyone’s felt it, when the crisp, clean air hits you and you take in that one deep cleansing breath. Everything feels lighter and the world’s just kind of brighter for a second. You feel alive and you feel awake and it’s like a instance where you don’t worry about the next few things you have to do. If anything, you feel a bit relieved you’re about to do them. I don’t know about you, but I always felt like I could take on the world, even for just a moment. And the world’s a prize fighter so that’s an achievement.

Seriously, if you can take a hit from an asteroid and then get back up while everything on you has been knocked out, you’re tough. I’m not afraid to admit it, Mother Nature’s a scary woman and she would kick the shit out of me. Hell, as I’ve stated, she already does. But for a moment you feel like, if you heard a tornado warning in the next minute, you’d be okay and you look forward to speaking to the Munchkins.

Maybe you’ll get some nice shoes out of the deal.

I don’t get that feeling very often. I’ve lived almost my entire life under an oppressive smog in a hot and dusty environment. It gets miserable here, on and off, in one form or another, and I’ve always struggled to just breathe, let alone breathe. But then I saw this sudden surge of numbers and retweets that were never there before and…for a minute, I felt it again. Not literal, of course, it’s allergy season so I can barely function right now. But metaphorically? Breath of fresh air I haven’t had in a long time.

Thank you for that.

Sometimes you have to wonder, while plotting out the lives of fictional characters, where your own story’s going to end up. I figure a lot of you know what I mean. You’ve probably woken up some days and wondered to yourself if it was time to just give up on things. Then there’s that stupid little inner debate between the two cliches in your head of the pessimist’s voice and that other voice constantly chiming the same line “you can’t win if you don’t try.” And we all know, and we can be honest about this – we hate that second voice because it’s telling us to keep throwing ourselves at the wall. It’s like a morning person singing in the next room while you’re hungover.  You know that killing it would ruin you… but it’s still kind of tempting.

But I don’t need to kill that little bastard today. I’m not feeling well enough to be insightful. I’m not alive enough to be witty or inspirational. I’m not sure that I can be inspirational even when I’m actually at my best. But I’m inspired and I can be grateful to everyone who has actually stopped by this last week and reminded me that, yes, I can breathe. And that’s a sensation I don’t get often without a heavy dose of allergy medication… which does other things to me.

The point is it’s the small things that make you stop to realize that you can make things work, even if you haven’t already. It’s the small nods of recognition or the little gold stars on your feed. It’s those thumbs up icons on Facebook that are from people you’ve never met before. Celebrating those little victories helps make the big victories feel more attainable. So, maybe I can actually see one of those someday too.

Well…

If that bitch Mother Nature lets me live a while longer.

(I write novels and this blog which will be returning to regular activity soon enough. In the meantime, I love you all. Yeah I’m a little high on allergy meds, but I mean it, I swear. You’ll also find me on twitter where I’ll try to be funny or something.)