I had a little bird,
And it’s name was Enza.
I opened the window
And in-flew-Enza.

I never get the flu vaccine. Not that I have a problem against vaccines on either religious or scientific grounds. I get my tetnanus shots ever 7 to 9 years and other assorted booster shots when needed. It’s just the flu shot tends to be a crap shoot, loaded with the bug most likely to cause trouble in a season.

And yes, I am one of those people who do get sick from the flu shot, so why get a shot that will not only cause me to get sick but might not protect me from the bug zeroing in on me.

Obviously, this is not a logic thing.

I wear my seatbelt whenever I’m in a moving car. I understand there’s a chance that wearing it could be a bad thing in case of an accident, but there’s an ever greater chance that it could save my life.

So why don’t I get the flu shot? I can function from the mild miasma, that I get with the injection. So that’s not the reason. Part of me knows, I get a greater immunity boost from getting the sickness than a shot. (NOTE: I don’t know of any hard scientific data to back that up but three out of three microbiologists I talked to agreed with me.) There’s also that fact that I am healthy and I should have no problem fending off a cold/flu.

Yeah, except for the Influenza epidemic of 1918, where the rhyme at the beggining this entry began.

In that case, the young, healthy perished. This deviated from the norm where the very young, old and compromised individuals usually are impacted the worst. Not that those individuals didn’t die. My grandmother lived through the Pandemic. The baby died; so did her father. She remembers jumping on the makeshift coffins stacked out by the curb, waiting for pick up.

And there were lots of them.

I’m still recovering from my encounter with the flu. I had a 104/37 fever for three days. I thought I’d never get warm. I’d crawl into the shower and just sit on the tile, lacking energy and having every single one of my joints hurt. My nose ran, my ears were clogged and each saw of my lugs was an effort. My temperature laughed at Tylenol and Ibuprofen but the aspirin wrangled it to 99.

Now, I’m still coughing up gunk, tissues bulge from every pocket and my ears keep popping but I’m almost back to normal. Almost because my energy levels are low and so is my creativity. I knew I wouldn’t be able to write during the flu, I barely had the energy to sit up and my thoughts were far from coherent. Still, I had hoped to start my next book on March 1st. That’s tomorrow.

Except I’m not certain what to write. Should I start the second book of the one I’m currently shopping to agents? What about a third book in a series I haven’t sold yet either? Maybe I should begin something new and fresh. Should I return to historical romance with an idea that I thought of while under the flu’s influence? Or maybe I should write that book on Atlantis that I’ve been kicking around for ages. Then there was a non fiction idea … .

Either way, tomorrow I start on my new project, I just wish I knew what it was.