My tickling throat swallows painfully. I crave a warm drink, but just the thought of braving the rain leaves me limp. My head floats somewhere between sleep and lethargy, and my body shivers. I swim against the current from the depths of consciousness and avoid the shores, deciding to tread the waters of the unknown.

Such are the thoughts that go through my mind upon waking from a sickness-induced nap. I am trying to avoid taking more cough medicine since I believe (without any proof) that the cough medicine caused my extreme headaches yesterday. A warm drink would be rather nice now. Is it wrong for me to spend so much time in coffee houses? If I cared what other people thought about my solitary typing on a plushy chair, I don’t think I’d go there as often—I’d also probably never eat alone in a restaurant or see a movie by myself. But I do, do, and do. I wonder what that says about me. Probably that coffee tastes good; restaurant food is usually better than the home-cooked variety; and movies are fun to watch in theaters. That and I don’t have much in the way of friends in Houston. But that’s okay. Who needs local friends when I have unlimited long distance and an endless supply of computer bits?

As I was saying yesterday before shooting pains in my head interrupted me rudely, I’ve done some rethinking about how I treat my work life. While I don’t usually go in for psychobabble (having long since convinced myself that all mental health experts enter their field with the intention of evaluating their own extreme mental problems and never quite succeed), I did realize some disturbing patterns that begin to explain how and why I have been behaving as I have over the last, oh, four years or so.

But first, I needs me some hot, chocolatey drinks. Okay. I’ve gotten that out of the way now. It’s decaffeinated (yes, I did end up staying up last night until three in the morning because of my tall mocha), and I bought a marble pound cake to wash down the coffee. I finally admitted to the coffee lady that I was not a student, and she now thinks that I just graduated. I couldn’t tell her truth. How would she believe me when I have such a young bearing, which I know is unfair to all those wrinkly people who share my age. Being immortal does have its advantages.

I’ve begun to notice that I no longer go to the coffee shop to escape the distractions and dreariness of my apartment. I just returned to my apartment after finishing my drink and cake. I’ve been going to Starbucks lately not as an escape but because I’ve craved the drinks. Is this the first sign of an addict? The sugar (and chocolate) is almost as bad as the caffeine. I’m going to have to give this more thought. Can I live without my fix? Why would I want to live in such a horrid world?

But I continue to digress instead of disclosing my revelations (I’ve gotten pretty good at these digressions). And here, yet again, my energy leaves me and I fail to answer the questions that I start with. Poking oneself to find injuries is not always fun, especially when you start to scream at the tender areas.