About three weeks ago, after chasing me around the world for two years, Covid caught up with me in LA and took a bite out of my ass. Being vaxxed and boosted, I figured five days of headaches and general low energy was par for the course. I started feeling better, tested negative, and we rolled out of Crestone toward Whitefish feeling like that whole Covid thing was in the rear-view mirror.
Which it kinda was, trailing us like a bill collector.
We camped in some beautiful spots in the Wind River range in Wyoming, came up through Yellowstone to my buddy’s pyramid compound near Ellis, MT.
Then we arrived at our destination in Whitefish, ready to teach this workshop we’d been thinking about for the past few months.
As you probably know, I don’t have kids, and I don’t mean to imply that my listeners/readers are kids, but I often feel that the energy that would have gone into parenting has instead gone into things like building an audience around the podcast, writing a couple of books (clearly, Sex at Dawn is a fiery little girl and Civilized to Death is a boy with scraped knees and a tree-house). So forgive me for bragging about the fact that whenever a group of people come together around my books or podcast, they turn out to be, objectively, the best fucking people ever. (This is as close to showing baby pictures as I get.)
I’m not going to get into what makes them awesome, cause then I’ll have to talk about them all, and as most parents/grandparents figure out, there’s a limit to how much of this the rest of the world wants to hear. Suffice it to say this is a group of truly deranged, brilliant, funny, kind, open-hearted people who’d come from far and wide by plane, train, and campervan to meet other weirdos like themselves. My impression is that no one was disappointed.
But this is when the bill collector made his move. It started with some ticklish coughing, progressed to night sweats and weird headaches, and culminated in me feeling like the brain fog had become a brain sandstorm. Approaching total whiteout.
The bottom line is that I stumbled through the conference as best I could, with love and support and advice coming at me from every angle, but as soon as it was over, I retreated into a friend’s cabin, where I spent three days on my back, contemplating the many mistakes I’ve made. (We’ve all been there, amiright?)
Anya finally dragged me to a doctor, who gave me two IVs, tested my blood and urine and then sat me down for a classic good news, less good news conversation. The good news was that I didn’t have pneumonia or kidney failure, but the less good news was that some of the other results warranted further testing.
So at this point, #vanthropology2022 is headed down to Oregon where, for reasons that make sense only to the twisted algorithms of American health care, my insurance coverage is better. Hopefully, we’ll get this sorted out in lovely Oregon, and the doctor’s advice will be that I start acting my age. Finally.
In the meantime, I’m feeling about 5% better every day, and obviously have enough energy to do some writing, but I’m still coughing every few breaths, so the podcast will remain on hold until I get that under control. I’ll keep you posted. No need to send your love and support and all that. I already feel it. Back at you.
Why it's been a Little Quiet Around Here
Chris, what you described on the podcast today re: the covid feeling, is also how I've felt about this virus. It's so bizarre, it's mental, it's an energy, you feel this sense of doom and like something is horribly wrong, and yet nothing in particular seems wrong. I had a fever, and I was supremely tired, but these things would not usually bother me if it wasn't because there was this all-engulfing anxiety to it. A LOT of people have felt it, it's not a regular virus.
Hey Chris, I hope you are feeling better. Look forward to hearing more from you. Best, Steve