Dear Diary,

I couldn’t maintain my invincibility forever.

While I was successful in avoiding the first round of colds, I have succumbed to this one. So far, it’s not too bad, but it did take away one of the kid’s voices, so there’s still opportunity for improvement. Un-improvement? Opportunity for worseness? I mean, from the cold’s perspective there’s opportunity for improvement in doing a better job at making me feel worse. I don’t necessarily WANT to feel worse, but the thought of losing my voice isn’t unappealing.

Sometimes it’s nice not having to talk.

Not to brag or anything, but my facial expressions do a lot of my communicating for me, and anything else can be expressed through charades. Who doesn’t love charades and turning communication into a game! So what if the rest of the family doesn’t want to play. Sorry kid, lost my voice, YOU MUST PLAY CHARADES WITH ME. It’ll be fun! In hindsight, my cheshire-cat-ate-the-canary mischievous grin probably isn’t helping me win them over. I suffer from resting mischievous grin face. I always look like I’m plotting something. I swear I’m not up to no good.

For everything else, there’s written communication. Personally, I like using my notes app. It makes for interesting reading later, because it’s an unconnected one-sided conversation. I enjoy the randomness of it all. I bet it would make great poetry.

I think when I’m not talking, it’s easier for me to turn off my internal narrator that likes to verbalize everything I’m experiencing. My internal narrator never stops talking. I think it’s my brain’s way of processing all the incoming data.

Right now my internal narrator is saying “this keyboard is really clicky. I like that it is ergonomic and has the split design. I really miss my floating keyboard from work, but I’m glad I got this keyboard because I could never work on a regular keyboard again. My hands need space to dance across the keys. Regular keyboards would make me feel all hunched up and squished. There’s no room to breathe. I wonder if there would be a better layout of the keys that would make typing faster. The QWERTY layout was designed to reduce typing clogs. Typing jams? Whatever it is that happens when people type too fast and the keys get all stuck together. If there was a new layout, I wonder how difficult it would be to learn, since I no longer think when I type. Would it be something my brain has the power to compensate for, or am I officially an old person unable to learn new technology tricks? I feel like I’ve got one foot in the proverbial technology grave already. Kids these days with their new apps and lingo and I’m just too tired to keep up with it all. Typing on a computer keyboard is super nice. I really forget how easy it is to go back and delete what’s already been typed. You couldn’t do that as easily with typewriters. Man, we have it so easy these days, with our deleting, and our ergonomic split keyboards. I’m living the mid-life technology dream”

I guess my internal narration isn’t all that different from my external narration. I think I verbally express the internal processing of the incoming data. I’m just going to blame that one on ADHD and call it good.

I bet that’s why I like not talking, because when I’m not talking, I’m not verbally expressing the internal processing of my incoming data, and maybe that somehow breaks the circuit so I’m not having to listen to the internal processing. I’m no longer processing, I just am.

Woah.

Not sure if my brain hurts more from the cold or this existential philosophizing.

Either way, I haven’t lost my voice yet. For now, it’s just throwing a party in my nasal cavity and lymph nodes.

I think I’ll go brew some tea and do a little light hibernating…