I have had an irritating day.

Why? Because I had to stay home sick again.

It started last last night. I started to feel the telltale ticklish dryness in my throat and heaviness in my chest. “Oh shit!” I thought, “I hope this clears up before class tomorrow!”

It did not. It got worse.

So I had to make the decision whether or not this warranted staying home. When it came time to make the decision, I chose to stay home, because not only did my symptoms seem to be getting worse by the minute, causing me to fully anticipate a cold that would go the distance and drag me through the usual throat stage, head stage, and chest stage progression I usually experience, but it was pouring rain outside and I figured dragging my ass to school through the pouring rain with a cold sounded like a real good way to end up with pneumonia or worse.

SO I emailed my prof and resigned myself to staying home AGAIN. I had perfect attendance until recently! I know that’s a very keener thing to worry about, but I have recently come to realize that while I was definitely a total coaster all through school, I did pick up some keener type instincts.

Plus, I’m a Taurus, and having perfect attendance makes me feel like I am reliable, and we need that kind of thing.

The frustrating part, though, comes from the fact that my symptoms have not gotten worse. I realize that it’s insane to wish you were sicker, and the sane part of me knows that. But the crazy part of me feels like I stayed home for nothing.

I would have been fine, it insists, conveniently forgetting the whole pneumonia angle.

So now I sit and grumble. Tomorrow is TV Script and I am sure as hell not missing THAT two weeks in a row. So unless I get way, way worse overnight, I am going to class tomorrow. It might be a bad idea, but I am going to do it anyway, because as we’ve established, I hate missing class.

What really burns my biscuits is that the class I missed today was Pitch 2, and today was the day we were going to learn a whole bunch of cool marketing stuff about how to make one sheets and pitch packages and such, all stuff that could be invaluable in my future career, and I had to stay home and spend my time not getting pneumonia.

Stupid fucking pneumonia.

I can only hope that most of what was covered today applied only to the movie side of the coin, so us TV people are safe.

I took a look at the schedule for class 51, the one before ours, who are now in their fourth term (I’m in my third) and hence they are past the point where they have to (get to) choose to go into either movies or TV. So I looked at the TV stream’s schedule and it made me so happy. It’s all “TV This” and “TV That” and has none of this wishy washy theoretical crap I have been learning so far. I mean, I am sure some of it will prove useful to me and was a good experience to have in order to make me a better writer.

But I want to learn TV, dammit. It’s been two and 3/8ths terms of waiting to be able to solidly tackle the thing I came to VFS to learn, and I am growing impatient. I keep hearing about how all this TV production is moving to Vancouver and how TV is going through a golden age right now and how TV shows are hungry for talent (I’m talent!), and it just makes me want to get out there and start conquering the world of television as soon as possible.

I have so much to give the world!

So yeah. Definitely making it to class tomorrow morning. And I get the feeling that I will be taking some unwise risks in the near future if I should awake feeling ill. The issue of whether or not I am sick has been one that has vexed me for a long long time. I feel pretty crappy on a fairly regular basis, and if that was my only criteria, I would never get out of bed. The trick, then, is to discern when I am truly sick and when I just feel like crap because of low blood sugar, sleep apnea induced hypoxia, or depression, and when I am truly sick and should not attempt anything strenuous.

It’s a depressing problem to have to face every day.

Speaking of depression, I realized recently that I have been depressed ever since the second half of grade 1. That means I was clinically depressed when I was only seven years old. How sad a thought is that? Back then, people barely even knew that clinical depression was a thing. They never would have recognized it in a child. But looking back on those days, I was definitely depressed. The feeling of icy isolation was with me even way back then, as was the inability to generate enough thrust to escape my own gravity well. The wall of ice between me and the world was hard and thick. I was on my lonely planet, far from the sun, and I was so cold that I had stopped shivering.

I tried to relate. But I couldn’t. It was too damned cold and I was too damned numb.

The right adult might have put me on the right path, or even the right friend. But they would have had to be extraordinarily patient and persistent in order to get through my defenses and prove to me that I could trust them. I have massive trust issues even to today, and back then, I had been burned many times.

Either that, or it would have taken someone with a very strong personality that could cut through the shift sifting chaos of my mind. Even then, they would have needed beaucoup patience.

So yeah. There were people who might have done better. But I don’t blame them. I was hard to handle.

And I know that shouldn’t count but… it does.

SO I got left behind.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.