The State of the Me

Still sick. I have made the decision to make a status post every day even if that’s the most substantial thing that I do, as I’ve been terrible at keeping up this habit lately even when I’m feeling fine. I feel somewhat better today than I did yesterday.

The Daily Report

Well, having spent most of the past two days lying on top of my blankets or occasionally lying in a bathtub staring straight ahead, I’ve spent a lot of time missing the days when I had a phone with a physical keyboard I could hold in my hands and write comfortably in that kind of position. Swiping feels clumsy, slow, and inelegant to me at the best of times. When I have serious fatigue and muscle soreness, it’s also exhausting compared to the practiced, precise finger movements needed for physical keys.

I have a wireless handheld keyboard/mouse controller thing that is the perfect size and shape for this kind of exercise, but I have no way of viewing a screen while I’m laying down. I’ve thought many times about various solutions, like a projector pointed at the ceiling, but that seems like an expensive experiment with uncertain results.

Then late yesterday I realized that I have been doing most of my writing on ILYS.com anyway, where the whole point is to not look at what you’re typing. It wasn’t until today that I had the wherewithal to get things set up, but I now have my wireless keyboard hooked up to my laptop. I can start a session in ILYS, then put the laptop aside, lay back, and tap out words as my energy level allows and the muse moves me to.

Because of the slightly greater disconnect between me and the medium, the text is not as clean as my typical first drafts, even using ILYS. But at least I’m writing.

Note that you don’t need a specific applet to not see what you’re typing if you’re lying down and not looking at the screen, but the advantage of ILYS for this purpose is that it’s impossible to accidentally move the cursor or whatever.