Week 35, 2024

It's been a whole 10 weeks since I wrote my last weeknotes. In case you don't know, I had been sick, with fever, a sore throat and, to make matters worse, I spent more than two weeks without any voice — to the point of having to write down what I wanted to say. I needed to see more than one until I could finally be cured.

The culprit? A bacteria, named mycoplasma. I had never been infected by it before and, I must say, never want to be infected by it again. Heaven forbid it. It took me weeks to recover, three different antibiotics, each stronger than the previous one. I talked to the doctor who, by the third medicine, admitted that, should it not work, she would send me straight to the hospital, where I would need to be admitted for more serious care. Thank God the third antibiotic worked and, despite giving me quite a lot of stomachaches, sent this damn bacteria away and for good.

Then more weeks came while I dealt with the absence of my voice, as according to my doctor, some temporary damage had been made to my vocal cords. It was horrible, wanting to speak and not being able to — something truly unimaginable. Then, almost three weeks later, I got over the voice problem — and fell to a deep, deep discouragement. I didn't want to write, I didn't want to read... I didn't want to create anything. I could barely work, imagine creating weeknotes. I halted them. I halted studying Japanese — and, in that case, haven't resumed it, yet. I thought a lot about this Foxes in Love strip, I needed to get back only when not feeling sick.

During this week I started thinking about changing — or, better saying, reorganizing this blog. Taking advantage of my lifetime Bearblog subscription and the ability to create multiple blogs that comes with it, I'm structuring a separate blog to register my readings, and another one to house my notes. Both of these will most likely be in Portuguese, but I'm sure it's going to be enjoyable if you feel like taking a look at them, once they're live.

For the time being, following what I've seen in some blogs here and there, I have created a guestbook, in the spirit of the first Internet sites and weblogs. So, if you like to visit my site and read what I write, consider leaving me a message. I'd certainly appreciate it.

I'm reading The Peripheral, by William Gibson, in its Brazilian Portuguese version. It's the first book by the author of Neuromancer that I'm reading, and also the one I decided to start my reading blog with (by clicking the link you'll see its entry, although in Portuguese).

The experience has been fine so far, and I'm curious to find out what's going to happen in the end. Apparently it's a trilogy, what scares me a little bit after my experience with Dune, a series I couldn't put up with reading after its second book (sorry if you're a Dune fan). In any case, I hope it's possible to safely stop reading by the end of book one, as I don't want to have lightning striking twice at the same place. Let's wait and hope.