Freeform

Just a few little points on this one. It's been a while, and I've been out of it.

Two weeks ago, I was the sickest I've ever been in my life.

I don't normally get headaches at all—the last serious one I remember was around the year 2000, and I've had about one since—but two weeks ago I had one that lasted about three days. I also got hit with a pain in the side that shows up when I'm stressed, but which my doctors have been unable to identify. It got so bad the hypochondriac in me started wondering if it was stomach cancer. Then my digestion went out of whack as well. 

This was compounded by the fact that I just wasn't sleeping. I put some of it down to my reading Angels: An Endangered Species, by Malcolm Godwin. I've never encountered a book that messed with my head before, but this one kept my mind so active at night that I just couldn't calm down enough to sleep. I finally had to set it aside, and I've been unable to touch it safely since. It honestly seems to make me sick. Very strange.

After about four days of looking so pallid people wanted to catch me by the arm I finally went to a clinic, where they prodded me, shrugged, and gave me some medication for the symptoms. At least being on national health insurance meant that it cost next to nothing. Three days later, things cleared up just in time for me to go to training.

Training is always stressful. This time it was more stressful than usual because my boss introduced a slough of changes in the 8 days before the event began, culminating with removing one member of our four-person team two days before the event. I usually didn't know what I was doing the next morning until about 10:00 at night, and I was getting about two hours' sleep from worry. Any job that finds you weeping in your hotel bed at 3:00 in the morning is not one that is doing you any service.

I got back from training to find a notification in my mailbox that my permanent residence application had been approved. I'd applied in March last year, and since they overhauled the immigration system this year, a process that normally takes six months took a year. After waiting over twelve months, they gave me a total of two weeks to pick up the certification—and it had taken nearly one of those weeks for the letter to get to me. Having just spent that week away, I got home to find out I had to pick up my certification in exactly 45 minutes. Thankfully, they let me extend to next week. Had they not, there would have been wailing and gnashing of teeth.

The day I got sick, I took some smokin' shots of my good friend, stage sister and hairdresser, Kat. We are both quite pleased with the results, which were based on her costume (or lack thereof) for the show The Possibilities, which played last week.

Having permanent residence means I am no longer dependent on any employer to live in this country, and it seems I can even leave for up to five years at a time.

I am presently working on getting my first play, No Time to Wait, produced in Tokyo, hopefully in November. I am working on developing comics so I can get Unremarkable published in the Daily Yomiuri. I have about 100 copies of my first book of poetry, The Apocryphal Bible of a Soul, sitting in my apartment, and I'll be selling some copies to a friend to use in her university English classes (as well as to anyone else who is interested!). I need to repolish the intro to my novel, Fragile Order, and send it to more agents. And I need to sign up with more modeling agencies and finally develop my vocal demo tape.

There's lots to do. Presently nothing brings me any money, however. So that will be the next step.

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