What a headache

Ever since Easter arrived and departed this year, in all its hot cross glory, I’ve had a headache.

I’m fairly used to headaches. Being a highly strung individual brings with it a number of benefits. Knowing how to keep on trucking with a tight band of tension wound across my forehead and teeth clenched together to keep them from gnashing are some of them.

But this wasn’t like that. For a start, it was in the wrong location.

Tension headaches are easily ignored bands across the front of my head. I can work through them, which is yet another reason they’re pointless. (I wish my body would learn these things.) They’re also nicely balanced across both sides of my head, as pain should be.

But this new headache was located in the back of my head and only on my right hand side. That’s on my right hand side if you’re standing behind me and looking forward, not my right hand side if you’re looking at me. If you’re not in the room at all, you’ll just have to guess the side I’m referring to. In the grand scheme of things it probably doesn’t matter.

There’s another downside to this new ache of my head as well. I can’t work through it.

When I’m at home and it starts, I weep gently on the couch. When I’m at work, I put my head down and try not to move until the painkillers kick in.

I would weep but that wouldn’t look great in the workplace. Imagine if they drag a group of hopeful employees about the floor trying to sell them on a career in insurance and they see me weeping at my desk. Believe me, insurance is a hard sell as a career in the first place.

My only consolation in the first few weeks was that it was a headache. It couldn’t last forever. Two doctor visits and three prescriptions later, my only consolation is that when I die at least my head will stop hurting.

And if you’ll excuse me now I’ll attempt to perform some neck exercises that are failing to stem the tide of pain each day in exactly the same way the headache preventer doesn’t prevent them, and the anti-inflammatory fails to anti-inflame anything.

(whine of the week over and out)

Blog Neglect

When I first started up my blog I was going to write an entry every single day. I know, I can hear you laughing from here.

It may surprise you to know that I did exactly that for much (not all) of the first year of my blog. I was a good little blogger, regularly blogging about the things that filled my little blogging mind. Some of them were even of interest to other people.

Then I started to resent the thirty minutes of time I spent writing my blog in the evening. Why, I could use that time to do actual writing for books that I could sell!

So I gradually tapered my blogs down to every other day instead. It may surprise you to learn that I did not use the freed up time to write. I used that time to watch more telly and Face more book.

Then I discovered that every other day comes around almost as often as every day. It’s like, every day with only one day in-between. So I thought about investing even less time in my blog (because, after all, I could use that time to write real books yada-yada-yada).

During my sabbatical I made the final call to seriously decrease, and after tapering off to once every three days or so, I abruptly moved to once a week.

Once a week is fine, I told myself. It’s often enough to keep me in the habit, but not so often that it feels intrusive. Why, I bet that after a week of not blogging I’ll look forward to writing my blog!

I know. I can hear you laughing from here.

So, I reduced it down to once a week. I also started up a newsletter that I sent out to my newsletter subscribers once a week. That’s two things a week I was writing.

After a month I felt justified dropping it back to once a fortnight just to even things out.

Then, the other day at work, someone was looking at my blog. They were looking for something specific and complaining that they couldn’t find it because whoever designed my website had neglected to install a search button on my blog. I countered that I couldn’t be bothered installing one and building a website from the ground up is a much bigger project than they realise, thank you very much.

I also tried to remember the last time I’d written a blog entry. Like my old blog entries. Not one of my, “I have a book to promote,” blog entries.

It was hard to recall and I didn’t want to embarrass myself by looking it up, but I thought that I should probably get right on that.

So, here I am. Getting right on that. After a pause of a day or two to collect myself.

In the brilliance of late night decisions that I’ll no doubt regret in the morning, I’ve decided to go back to blogging every day. I doubt this will curtail my writing, although it scares me that it may claw seriously into my gazing blankly at Facebook time.

If you don’t want to receive an entry every single day, you may want to get out now. I mean to keep this up!

Yeah, I know.

I can hear you laughing from here.

The Book Fairy leaves a deposit

Yesterday, the book fairy paid a visit to my house.

Admittedly, I was at work at the time and due to a series of instructions – none of them issued by me – the book fairy declined to leave the carton of books at my address, choosing instead to drag them far, far away to a depot out the back of the airport.

I tried to woo the fairy back to my house, with promises of being available on Saturday morning, and a general willingness to sign strange little hand-held computing devices, but – alas – it was not to be.

Luckily, someone else in the household was just as eager to get hold of these little beauties as I was (nag, nag, nag, nag, nag) so drove me all the way out to the wop-wops and back home.

The only thing worse than having to drive out to the back of the airport to collect the books you paid over a hundred dollars to have delivered to your door, is when you drive past the shop you ordered said goods from, on the way to and from the airport.

In this case, at least, I was spared that indignity by way of the actual printing house being located in an entirely different country. Phew. Otherwise, I would’ve railed on at fate for another good hour before letting it all go.

Anyway, I’m pleased to say that I’m now the proud owner of a box of my own books. Yippee. I live in hope that in a couple of weeks I will no longer be the proud owner but may have a slightly higher bank balance.

This is also the first time that I’ve arranged for a hardcover version of one of my novels. God bless Ingram Spark.

This is what the hardcovers look like in the box:

You’ll have to imagine what they’d look like when they’re in your hands, being read.

And here is what the paperbacks look like:

I went with a brighter cover for these ones; obvious where the hardcover is subtle. The good point being that the cross on the cover has become more apparent because – in the words of my darling – “I didn’t even realise there was a cross on the cover.” Sigh.

Subtlety. Being lost on Kiwi men since 1964.