Gotta Get Back In Time

WAYNE’S WORDS
Volume 9 Number 04
Gotta Get Back In Time

Well, here it is - the end of the month - time for another blog. I’m not really sure my head is in it, but I will give it a whirl. Not to sound passive-aggressive or anything, but I really don’t think whether my blog sucks a lot or a little has much impact on many people at all. Judging from the number of comments and the tracking statistics provided to me by Google, only 8 of you open it. Who knows how many of those 8 actually read it? Alas, as I may have said in the past, I do it mainly for me. I guess. Whatever.

Anyhoo…

I glanced at my last blog about my pneumonia and saw that I ended it with this statement, “Of course, that 3 day fever was pretty severe. If I could travel back in time and change it… I don’t know. Would I? Should I? I will have to think about that.”

This may shock you, but I didn’t actually think about it: until now.

Going back in time and changing the fact that I contracted pneumonia would, obviously, be impossible. I don’t know when, where, or how I caught it. I wouldn’t even know to what point in time I should go to prevent the illness. So, no sense in even going!

Time travelling to the past is very tricky. To be a responsible time traveler much caution must be taken.

Going back in time becomes problematic the farther back the Impact Point is, the greater the change the traveler makes is or the more interaction with the rest of the world (between the Impact Point and the Return Point) the traveler has. Again, no one would perceive any change except the traveler, but the changes grow greater as any of the three aforementioned items increase in magnitude. There is often conversation about residual memories from alternate time lines, but that’s just poppycock!

Going back an hour or two wouldn’t affect me too much and you wouldn’t perceive the effect at all. If I had gone back 15 minutes and changed title of this edition of my blog from “The Impact of Millennial Pop Culture on Today’s Society and How Reality Television is the Root of All Evil” to “Gotta Get Back In Time,” you wouldn’t even know it. Only I would. Only I know if I have actually done that.

That short jump didn’t screw with the continuum too much, because so little happened along the time line between the Impact Point and the Return Point. No, I didn’t run into myself. I changed the blog while the past me was in the toilet.  The only thing that seems to be different now is that my “other” blog doesn’t exist and this new one is started. Also, I missed a phone call. That’s weird. Oh, well.

What if I jump back again and the Impact Point is this morning before I woke up and all I do is leave a note for me that there was no work today, so I stay in bed and watch TV? Quite a bit would change for me and quite a bit for the outside world. I wouldn’t have done the work I did today. I wouldn’t have talked to the people I did today. I wouldn’t have done ANYTHING that I did today. Depending how the dominos of events fell, that change would have anywhere from a small to a large impact on the rest of you – though no perception by anyone, but me.

What if the Impact Point was a year ago and I made the same tiny change (stayed home from work)? What about a decade ago? 20 years ago? So many event dominos would have fallen that the new now may actually be unrecognizable. Would things be better or worse? I would be the only one who could even make that judgement. Again, everything would be “normal” to you.

What if the change I made was a larger one? What if I went back and tried to change something bigger? What if I went back to earlier today and closed a giant, money making, national account? Cool, right? What if I went back one year and did the same thing and I was now building a house or something? Even cooler! What if I went back a decade and did the same thing and was wealthy from that account and turned into more of a dick than I already am? Hmmm? You wouldn’t know the difference. I would just be that rich dick Wayne.

What if I changed something really huge, like hit Lee Harvey Oswald in the head with a rock just before he fired. Would things be better? Would things be worse? Only I would know and you would only study about the attempted assassination of JFK. There are even bigger changes that could be attempted (and that we all dream about), but to type them here would only stir up superfluous controversy. Regardless, I would be the only one who would know if the change I made actually turned out good for the rest of you non-travelers, because you would just be flowing along that now changed timeline not knowing of any other possibility.

The only way to time travel without any consequence to the outside world is to do it in complete and utter solitude. (Suspend any notion of The Butterfly Effect) If, for one year, I locked myself in room or a house that was totally off the grid and self-sustaining and had no connectivity to the rest of the world, I could conceivably jump back in time within the confines of that year and that house as much as I wanted without changing what was going on with you. On day 364, after watching every damned dvd series I had, I could jump back to day one and start reading all of the books on the shelf. Then I could jump back and start working out 8 hours a day, or learning to play guitar or piano. I could give myself my own private Groundhog Day. When I returned to the outside world, all you would know is that Wayne went away for a year and he came back super buff, talented and knowledgeable.

But, what would I have missed? I would have missed an entire year of time with people I love and enjoy. Was it worth it? I could go back in time and never enter the Groundhog Day House, but that would change everything.

We all seem to wish we could go back and change something. Whether it is something within our own lives or even something long ago and on a grander scale, we never really know how our lives or the world would be affected by said change. We know we think the change would make things better, but we can never really know.

I have said the things I have said and done the things I have done.

All I can do is try to learn from my triumphs and from my mistakes.

Regret is futile.

Until Next Time,

Wayne

Rockin’ Pnumonia and A Boogie Woogie Flu!

WAYNE’S WORDS
Volume 9 Number 03
Rockin’ Pnumonia and A Boogie Woogie Flu!

And I was trying to be so good with my blog this year! This is only the third installment! In ’07 I wrote 20 – and I didn’t even start until August! In ’08 I wrote 23 – almost two a month! Yikes! What happened to me? Have I run out of things to say? Have events worthy of typing into the computer dwindled? Nah! I suck. Or I am busy. Tis hard to tell which.

Aaaaaanywaaaay.

I was actually going to write one of these blasted things on the 31^st of May, but something happened. It hasn’t happened since January of 2012. Before that it hadn’t happened since September of 2008. This time, though, it happened worse than it ever has in my life!

On the 31^st I took Hillbilly Mom to breakfast and shopping like any given Sunday. Afterward, I came home and took a nap. Also like any given Sunday. However, unlike any given Sunday, I awoke from that nap SICK. I wasn’t just sick, I was pretty sure I was dying!

Hells Bells! I had a 103.8 degree fever! I was, almost literally, in hell – or at least it felt like it. That fever lasted for 72 hours!

Sleeping was difficult, because I was soaked with sweat and couldn’t sleep through all the wailing. Someone was rhythmically howling “God, please help me!” Over and Over and Over! I would awaken and find out it was me! Twenty minutes of that “sleep” at a time was not helping.

In the daytime I would fall asleep from fever and fatigue. I would sleep, seemingly, forever then wake up exactly 1 minute later! That happened thousands of times!

I was finally able to bring the fever down and felt like I was getting better. No such luck. Next was 48 hours of spiking fever - from 100 to 102 and change then back down and back up again. Over and Over and Over.

Then, finally, I made it to a healthcare professional. I was stabilizing at a cool and constant 101 degrees when she gave me about a 55 gallon drum-full of antibiotics through a hypodermic needle stuck into my ass! On top of that, I was given a Z-Pak to start taking the next day. After that, the fever finally started to normalize.

Pneumonia. It sucked – five days of fever; seven days in bed; as many changes of bed linen as possible; countless t-shirts and underoos soaked through and deliriously piled in the corner of my room. I had sweat so much throughout that week that I had to order a new mattress! Hopefully, it will be here soon, this one is still kind of sloshy.

As of the writing of this blog installment, I am, for the most part, better. The only problem now is the fatigue. I still get tired VERY easily. In fact, tonight I didn’t get to take my two and a half hour nap after work and I am really feeling it right now. The Doc said that the fatigue could last for weeks. I have heard that it lasts for months for some people.

I would like to thank Hillbilly Mom for coming by and forcing soup down my gullet and putting a cooler filled with bottled water within arm’s reach. I’m also appreciative all my friends and co-workers that kept waking me with text messages of well wishes. Actually, I wasn’t sleeping anyway!

Luckily, there is some good that came out of the whole sweaty mess!

I lost a few pounds. Probably, because I don’t think I ate much more than a can of soup in the first six days of the illness. ;)

I was also able to cut my pack a day smoking habit down to a cigarette or two a day or an occasional cigar. For those of you who know how much I have struggled with trying to quit smoking, I know it is not completely gone, but I’m pretty happy with the progress. A good by-product of the cut in smoking is the ginormous cut in salt! I don’t think I have salted my food once since I got back on solids! Yay me!

Another awesome thing that happened is that I turned my beverage drinking habits inside out. As many of you know, I would awaken, each morning, to my first drink of Diet Coke and go to sleep, each night, with my last drink of Diet Coke. Between those two drinks each day was… All Diet Coke. Of course, I would sometimes drink water if I went out for a meal, but more Diet Coke went into my body than you can imagine. Now, I drink water from the beginning until the end of my day and I have a soda (as a treat) with a meal. Hell, when I went to purchase provisions last week, buying Diet Coke didn’t even cross my mind!

So, there was a silver lining or two on the cloud of pneumonia that was in my lungs.

Of course, that 3 day fever was pretty severe. If I could travel back in time and change it… I don’t know. Would I? Should I?

I will have to think about that.

Until Next Time,

Wayne

PS I MAY have fried some brain cells too. I don’t think I think as goodly as I used to.