Storytime with Sturge

Hello friends.

Here's a question: what do you find that you do when you're feeling under the weather? For me, the default is a lot of TV, and a lot of food - it's a very passive and sofa-heavy lifestyle, which isn't great in the long-run. But usually illness is pretty short-term, so the temporary pause in activity isn't too catastrophic. The last couple of weeks, coming up to a month, I've found myself again in a slightly longer period of not-being-that-well. (I've had post-viral fatigue before, and other things I've had to recover from, so this isn't a new experience; but this time it's post-viral labyrinthitis which is a new thing to cope with...*rolls eyes* *makes self feel dizzy* *closes eyes for a few moments*). And, having already spent enough time in front of the TV, I wanted to do something more productive with the time that I'm not spending out and about doing things. Not being able to drive or cycle myself places has been a real pain (and, actually, being 'out' isn't that nice of an experience if I don't have a proper place to sit!), but it does leave a few more evenings free, and definitely cuts down on commuting hours (although I am missing my cycles!)

A small amount of my 'continue watching' list...

I find that when I'm ill I get really frustrated - with the world, with myself, with the situation - and often the reason I'm watching the TV so much is because I can escape into a story. Story has such a wonderful way of transporting us to another world, or into someone else's world, and helping us, just for a while, to forget what it is we're trying not to dwell in. Too much of that isn't necessarily healthy, if we're using it to evade our reality completely, but it can be a balm. In fact, I wrote about something like this before, when I was coming up to aforementioned operation. Em, you're like a broken record.

Everyone needs something
warm to cradle as they
take in a good story, eh?

Anyway. So I decided that while, yes, there are a LOT of stories I can dwell in and escape to on Netflix (and I mean a lot. Honestly, it's not possible to watch it all, is it? Though I could definitely give it a try...) there are also lots of stories that I have to tell that won't require my escape, per se, but will bring me a lot of light relief in the retelling. There are so many things I've done, or situations I've been in, where I've thought 'oh, that would make such a fun blog!' but have never gotten around to telling it. So here we are. However many stories I find I've got to tell, for as long as I need to be sat here telling them, until the dizziness passes and I'm out among the trees and the orange-brown leaves and the sunshine again...if there's only one and I get up and about again soon, forgive me. If there's hundreds and it never ends, forgive me that too.

Why don't you pull up a pew, put on a warm cardigan (or turn up the heating - I can just see under my chipped nail varnish that my nail-beds are turning blue, and my nose has gone cold), grab a cup of tea (or a decadent hot chocolate), and I will tell you some stories...
(...soon.)