So today is the first day I actually kind of feel like my old self. Thanks to the herbs from my monthly acupuncturist visit, my phlegmy flu is gone. It wasn't really a bad flu. I just had a sore throat, which made me cough a ton. But my body must have been fighting off something fierce because I was tired all the time but still unable to sleep due to all the coughing.

I don't know about you, but sleep is how I cure all my colds. If I can force myself to sleep, I know I'll get over any cold. My problem is I'm an insominiac and have been one for years, and I normally only get about 6 to 6.5 hours of sleep anyway. If I get less than six hours of sleep, my immune system starts to break down. If I get more than 6.5 hours of sleep, I get depressed and cranky. It's a bizarre delicate balancing system that I have to go through just to keep myself "normal".

I wish I was one of those people who could sleep longer. Sometimes when I do manage to sleep for 7-8 hours, I feel really good which must mean I should probably sleep more. But when I sleep for that long, my mind starts to freak out and I start thinking that I'm sleeping my life away and must be depressed or something. Then the cycle starts and I start to reexamine my life, and then boy do I get grumpy.

I don't know if I'm a type-A personality who has to constantly go around with their hair on fire and running from one crisis to the next, but if I'm not constantly on the go or doing something to the point of exhaustion then life feels like totally boring to me. And god forbid I should lead a boring mundane existence.

Many apologies for the lack of posting, but writing about my life on my blog was not very appealing. But not to worry. I'm getting healthier every day, and soon I'll be back ranting about my life again.

Add to my list of job duties:

Writer and creator of monthly senior management newsletter on trends in healthcare quality measurement.

I am doing way too much writing in my job.

Did I mention I wrote up two tutorials to be made into cd-roms for a couple of tools on the company website. I am also the reluctant writer of the website FAQs for my program.

Again, I repeat. I am doing way too much writing in my real job. Is this why I can't write in personal life?

I've had a slight infection in my lungs since Monday. It's one of the hazards of travelling, 3-4 hours of sleep a night, and meeting lots of new people in a different city.

I noticed it on Monday morning when I woke up and my throat was very dry, and by that eveving it became progressively worse. It's not a full blown cold yet because I've been able to fight it off, but it's been zapping my energy so I'm not writing much and trying to sleep.

If I could just sleep for 8 hours straight and not wake up, I know I'd heal myself. But my anxiety is back up and so I sleep fitfully and keep waking up. Not the best healing condition for a infection that's just waiting to turn into a cold or the flu.

I think I'll spend the weekend at home, trying to get caught up with my writing and working on my film history paper that is due next Thursday; in between movie watching of course. It's time like these I'm glad I'm not in a full blown relationship, and I can schedule my time all for myself and what I need to do. I don't know what guy would put up with my schedule demands.

Memo to self:

Do not invite the current man you are seeing to next year’s screenwriting expo on Sunday night. Two weeks before, I know it sounded like a great idea, but it so wasn’t. We’re talking like an epic style disaster in the making. Just don’t do it.

The screenwriting expo is an escape into the Hollywood/Los Angeles reality of maybe, just maybe I’ll write that one screenplay that the studio executives will love and I’ll make wads and wads of money.

Never mind that Hollywood studio execs are fearful of losing their jobs and being the one to greenlight the next ‘Ishtar’ or ‘Waterworld’. Never mind that Hollywood studio execs are trolling thru the Japanese cinema to remake the next runaway Japanese horror flick adaptation. Never mind that the Southeast Asian market is starting to become exceedingly more profitable than the US market, and those audiences want ‘blood, blood and more blood’, which means Hollywood studio execs want ‘blood, blood, and more blood.’

But wait a minute … there are screenwriters out there who’ve made it. There are screenwriting experts galore who for three days teach you the screenwriting secret mantra, ‘Good characters and story still sell in Hollywood.’

But on Sunday night when you’re exhausted from:

1) having supershuttle pick you up at god awful hour so you could make the 6:30 am flight to LAX, then being in seminars from 1 pmm to 8:30 pm on Friday not to mention being up till 1:30 am chatting with the cute guy who says he’s optioned two films and is a budding Hollywood producer (everyone at the expo was a budding Hollywood producer), and marveling at the amazing gene pool of men who are at the party because Hollywood is always full of pretty people.

2) Waking up on Saturday at 6 am to iron your clothes for the next two days, then going on a run around the LA Convention Center at 6:30 am because all that great mexican beer you drank the night before made you feel fat and you’re afraid of not fitting into your clothes, then attending seminars from 8 am to 8:30 pm and then partying at the Networking party and wondering how much you need to speak to on the guys who wrote Shrek, and then ending up at another bar and chowing down on Domino’s pizza because it’s the only pizza place open in downtown LA that will deliver and getting to bed at 2 am.

3) And then finally it’s Sunday and you’ve slept in till 7 am and attended seminars from 10 am to 1:30 pm and attended the closing ceremony exhausted but happy that you came and swearing to yourself that you’ll get your writing act together and finish that screenplay and write three new screenplays to pitch at next year’s expo.

It’s like so anti-climatic to see someone from your 'normal real world' show up to take you to dinner, and all you can talk about is all the guys you’ve met, and how cute Aaron Sorkin is. And your guy looks at you like he doesn’t really quite like you right now and you feel guilty as hell that you’re talking about other guys, and mad as hell at yourself for even inviting him.

And then you end up flying back home on Monday morning and crying from sheer exhaustion and misery at 7 pm as you check your 80 plus personal email messages because now you’re thinking it’s totally over between you and your current guy, never mind that you’ve been trying to break up with him since October 1 and he doesn’t deserve any of your attention anyway.

Having your fantasy/dream worlds and real worlds collide like that on a Sunday night at 7 pm in Los Angeles in close proximity to Hollywood, maker of fantasy/dream worlds, is just such a bummer, a huge, huge bummer.