I had a somewhat nasty chest infection over last week. It seemed to reach its peak last Sunday. I think “incapacitation” describes what happened fairly well; I felt like I was consistently running headfirst into an imaginary wall. I slept for about 4 hours on Sunday afternoon, and another 12 at night; probably at least 11 if not 12 on Monday evening as well.
I think I recovered somewhat through the week, though not yet completely. It was enough to host a programming contest on Friday, and to sing (though not convincingly) on Friday evening as well. It has been quite a while since I had been unwell to this extent. I don’t think I’ve had anything of this scale since I started studying at Imperial 5 years ago.
It served as a good reminder of the importance of health, something which I tend to not really think about very much. The cough did get in the way of my sleep as well, so I spent a good amount of time thinking. These thoughts ranged over quite a number of issues, including goals, planning, work and logic. I’m sure some of these must have been influenced by said illness, but there were some actionable ideas and thoughts. I did think about two aspects of what I call the “dark side of compound interest”: (i) the possibility that one may not be around to enjoy the results, and (ii) the inclination to discount present purchases by a lot by thinking about their value in the far future. I don’t think my chest infection was that serious at all, but (i) certainly looks influenced by it.
The post for this week is much shorter than normal, as I haven’t been able to gather the mental resources to write much longer. This also isn’t one of those “if I had time, I would have written a shorter letter” scenarios, to be clear! I’ve been making an effort to produce somewhat more readable and simpler writing. I think it’s a sufficient status update.
