Up it came and off it went

Oh my life is so funny.

This was a big week! I had my first tour on Wednesday and also that night, I was to go to a talk I had been waiting for for months, the talk was from a big guy in Obama's campaign and he was going to talk about how Mies was such an influence on the Obama campaign. Um, like it was made for me right? It was going to be the best day ever...yet....

On Tuesday night I started to get sick and by midnight I was spending some real quality time with the toilet. I was up and down all night - food poising I think - and it was a really horrible, long, shaky night. On Wednesday morning I went through all my options. I knew hardly anyone was coming on the tour and that was fine, but I just wasn't sure. I could go ahead and twitter that it wasn't going ahead and all that, but that just seemed so lame!

So I managed to stand up, get on a train and head downtown. I don't know how. I really believed I was going to die.

There was one kind lady on my tour, a twitter friend I had never met in person. I was so shaky and tired but she had come all this way...so on the tour we went. About halfway through I couldn't talk, I was losing my breath and it was scary for me. I couldn't think cohesively at all and I kept trying so hard to get the right words out but I couldn't. I explained to my new friend what was happening, but couldn't help thinking how lame it sounded.

Anyway, the tour finally over - I ended it early, I literally could not stand anymore - I apologized profusely to my friend and somehow made it home and even took the dog for a walk at about one mile per hour. I sat on the couch for the rest of the day, slept, drank water and just generally cursed life. There was no way I was making it to my Obama thing...pissed about that.

But here, yesterday was about so much more than the actual tour. As I laid in bed trying to figure out what to do it full on occured to me that there was no one else to rely on, no one to send in my place, that this was mine and I had to step it up. I tend to be very kind to myself and to not make myself suffer much and certainly would have "called in" to any kind of job yesterday, but I couldn't with this. And I so wanted to take the easy way out and cancel it, but even though no one would have been affected really, I just couldn't cancel.

So I got up and suffered for my art and passion. Granted, the tour blew, but it really was about more than that. And as I said to my friend Erica, "it will never be that hard again."

Yes, so I feel so much better today, although I'm off for an afternoon nap, but my first tour was a total failure and a total success. Figures.