A Bleak 2020
It’s been a while since I posted anything here, but I feel I need to do some update in order to stay relevant in Google searches.
2020 started out pretty good. I had plenty of graphic design work in both January and February.
On February 26th, I flew to Australia for an earlier than usual vacation. Australia wasn’t high on my bucket list of countries to visit.I was mainly going for my youngest son’s wedding (he was marrying an Aussie), but decided to fly there early so I can do some hiking in Tasmania.
All was going well until March 1st when I started to feel poorly during a hike at Cradle Mountain. As I was hiking around Dove Lake, it was bitterly cold and a bit rainy. When my nose started to feel stuffy and my ears felt numb, I turned back to go to the shelter at the trailhead to wait for others in my group to finish the hike. While in the shelter, I started shaking with chills, my head started pounding and I got a bloody nose.
When the group returned from their hiking, we headed to a hostel where I immediately went to bed after taking some paracetamol (like Tylenol). I had no appetite and couldn’t stop shaking from the chills. My guide later woke me up and encouraged me to eat the wonton soup he brought me. I slept fitfully that night.
The next morning, while others went to the beach, I headed to the ER to get checked out. The coronavirus was really started to spread around the world and the guide wanted to be sure that wasn’t what I had. Unfortunately, there were no tests for the virus yet and since I had taken more paracetamol, I had no fever. $800 AUD later, I was discharged with no meds and no diagnosis.
Instead of hiking the next two days of the tour, I stuck around the hostel, popping paracetamol and sleeping a lot (I felt so fatigued). Troubling was that I had no appetite and felt sick in my stomach…not a good thing when one is diabetic.
I was still feeling pretty sick when I flew to Melbourne. My son’s wedding was the next day. I was miserable the entire wedding and reception. It was in the low 70s, but I couldn’t get warm. After an hour of the reception, I took an Uber back to the AirBnB I rented.
When I flew home on March 10th, my fever had finally broken and I started to feel a bit better, but I still felt very fatigued. Nobody was doing any screening at the airport in Los Angeles where I transferred planes (from international to domestic, which required going through security again).
I spent the next three weeks at home, not venturing out for even a minute. I felt ok to work, but by this time our state pretty much shut down and suddenly a lot of people were out of work. Since I usually work with small businesses, I understand why they aren’t willing to spend money on graphic design projects when they aren’t certain they can survive being closed down.
Since March, I have managed to get about 1-2 hours of work every two weeks. Thank goodness my husband (who already worked from home) is still working…in fact, his company is having their best year yet!
We don’t know how things will go in the months ahead. It may get better, but the odds have them getting worse. I just hope that 2021 will be a better year for everyone!
