Weekly Update - 7/10/24 (Patreon)

I swear to you, at some point things will either get back to normal or I'll die, although I make no promises about which will happen first.

On Wednesday of last week, I started feeling the occasional bouts of nausea, like I was about to throw up, and never did, but they were rare and fleeting. My appetite dwindled over the next few days, and I was trying to drink as much water and fruit juice as I could, but I wasn't eating a whole lot either. Thursday and Friday passed without things getting better, in fact getting more frequent, and Saturday I started to get worried. Monday, I cancelled out on my boardgame group and told them I was considering going into the hospital. In the end I chose not to, because I'd started to feel the nausea a little less often, so I decided to hold on.

Yesterday, I skipped a concert (The Afghan Whigs & The Church, at my favorite venue ever, The Fillmore in San Francisco) for the first time since 2022 because I was scared of the nausea coming back. (Out of the 350+ concerts I've bought tickets to since 1993, I've only missed, I think, a total of 3 of them because of illness. I generally do not skip shows, no matter what, especially at The Fillmore. The one comfort I can take about it is that apparently the show wasn't sold out, so there wasn't a poster for it, although I'm bummed, as I've always wanted to see The Church live. I've seen the Whigs before.)

When I woke up this morning, I was drenched in sweat, I'd had a fever dream the night before and I didn't feel the nausea anymore, although I felt hungry like a motherfucker, and a bit of a caffeine withdrawal headache as I hadn't had a soda since Saturday (and no, I don't drink coffee or tea).

By midafternoon, I was starting to think I'd come through it and got a call from the boys in my poker group, wanting to know if we were on, so I decided to brave it, headed out, got my weekly Arby's beforehand, and went and played some goddamn cards. (For those keeping track, I finished the night down $25, but that's fine - last time I ended up up $45.)

I haven't had any nausea at all today, so I'm hoping I'm finally through this fucking thing. It's now just shy of midnight, and I've had my first semi-functional day today, although I spent a good part of it getting caught up on emails, both day and night job related, and tomorrow, I'm going to hit the grindstone running, I hope.

I know I've been a total fucking mess the last month, and I've tried to be as honest about what's going on as possible, and to provide you with as much detail as I can without scaring anyone. I've appreciated everyone telling me to take care of myself first, but I do still feel a little like I'm letting people down when I'm not making deadlines.

Anyway, tomorrow I'm going to pick up where I left off in trying to get caught up in things, and before I crash tonight, I'll toss up a poll, so people have until Sunday to decide what I'm putting out on Tuesday.

I do have a concert on the 20th that I'm absolutely going to, despite the giant fucking drive (I'm seeing dada, whom I haven't seen since, uh, ouch, 1998, but I have like a 2-hour drive each way for the show.) and then the 26th and 27th, I'm judging for the next Magic: The Gathering prerelease.

All of this is a very long-winded way of giving you as many details as I can and saying I'm going to try and get back into things, but that I'm still on the mend, and watching very carefully in case things go south again, because I'm paranoid as fuck. 

Hopefully within a few weeks, the temperature will stop being 75F at night, my health will be back to full, and I'll be back on full blast, but at least take heart in the fact that I'm making news posts, I'm not dead, and I think I'm getting better.

Here's the upcoming public release schedule: 7/13 - CARP 8, QTPT 17, 7/20 - Pack 9, NS 4, 7/27 - QT2:19, QTAA8.

But that's all the news that's fit to print. Sorry again about all of this. I wish I was in better health. I'm going to try and start eating a bit better, drinking less soda and taking a bit of time to go walking each day instead of molding into the shape of my chair. Maybe it'll help...

Oh, one last thing - if you're pitching to me or the rest of my team for a possible Quaranteam story, please - don't send us more than 10k worth of words to start with, otherwise be very patient on how long it'll take us to get back to you and/or how much we may ask you to rewrite. I'm all for letting other people play in the QT sandbox, but it's very easy to go too far down a rabbit hole and for us to tell you to bring it back in...