It’s 1:45am, and I’m still awake. I can’t settle. My brain is overworked. I’m on campus from noon until about 20:30 and my body clock is just generally shot to pieces. I have so much work to do. Two courseworks, one draft chapter for my project report, and an essay. It’s going to be an entertaining three weeks, and the voices of doubt are getting gradually louder and more enthusiastic.

This is why I shouldn’t write blog entries when I can’t sleep.

EDIT: 4:45, and still awake.

It’s amazing how being confined to bed for four days can give you some time to… dwell. Despite all my assurances that this year I wouldn’t do that, it’s happened anyway.

For those that I haven’t whinged to, I’ve caught a very bad case of the flu, incorporating some rather interesting leg and arm pains, a high fever of 39.4, loss of appetite (and spelling, as it took me three goes to get that word right), and my lungs trying to escape through my mouth every time I cough! This has all led to me being stuck in bed since Wednesday night, and thus not going out for a meal to celebrate my birthday. Let us add this to the ‘birthdays I’ve had in the 21st century which have been a depressingly horrible experience’ list! Admittedly, I’ve only had 7 to choose from, but thus far it’s almost at half!

In-between systematically working my way through my DVD collection and trying to sleep off the impressive temperature, the only thing I’ve had to do is to think, and the recurring themes seem to be the following:

- How much work I’m not getting done cos I can’t think properly
- So much for looking at postgrad stuff this weekend
- Promises I’ve made for this week which I’m probably not going to be able to keep
- Have I done something wrong? Why is this happening to me on my birthday? Have I done something that I’m being punished for?
- Just how much of a burden I’m being on everyone around me
- How fed up I am of the walls around me

and they tend to get worse from there, and feed into my usual rants about whether I’m good enough to be at University and whether I just should just give it up now! I’m a thorough thinker!

Of course this does nothing to speed up my recovery. Whilst most of the symptoms have disappeared… quite suddenly, actually… I’m still stuck with a painful cough that is beginning to resemble a chest infection more and more every couple of hours. This inevitably means more days off sick, and less work done, and more time feeling sorry for myself.

Another fantastic birthday!