I am on day four of eating nothing but toast with butter and cinnamon, saltine crackers, and arroz caldo after battling one of the worst flus I’ve ever had. Was it COVID? The at-home test will tell you ‘No,’ but I’ve never felt the kind of pain I felt/am feeling. It’s been 3 days of laying in bed, struggling to keep my mid-section from erupting, and stop my brains from falling out because I wasn’t allowed coffee.

Special shoutout to my wife who held down the fort by herself, wrangling the twins while also keeping the newborn, Baby C, happy as best she could while still not 100% after giving birth less than three months ago.

Thankfully, like the Turtles say, “It’s time to go back.”

That saying resonated so strongly with me while I laid in bed with nothing to do but let my mind wander. I read some books, but one I stopped 50 pages in for not liking, I finished Matt Bell’s “Refuse to be Done,” (Amazon) which I should dissect on here at some point, and started Tehlor Kay Mejia’s first “Paola Santiago” (Amazon) book. I’m liking that one okay, but, we’ll see.

Since my brain was hurting so bad from no-coffee-mad-angry-sick time, I switched to YouTube. However, you can only watch so much Power Rangers critique videos on YouTube and you can only do so much active scrolling (the opposite of doomscrolling), so that’s when you turn to old films. I have two comfort movies I watch on the rare occasions I get sick: The 1989 Batman film starring Michael Keaton and the 1990 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film.

(Fun note: I just learned legendary composer, Shirley Walker, helped work on the music for this film, so not only did she shape my childhood ears by composing music for the DCAU, but she also had a hand in one of my all-time favorite films.)

The Turtles, after suffering a devastating loss to the Foot Clan, retreat with April O’Neil and newfound ally Casey Jones to April’s farm in the countryside. Recovering, and rediscovering a new spirit to help them go on, they return home to their NYC sewer, but not before letting April and Casey know what’s on their minds with this line.

“It’s time to go back.”

Anyway, I’m not going to let this first post back ramble on and on about what I was thinking about while recovering. Honestly, I couldn’t if I wanted.

It’s more about sensations than anything, feelings about thought in the moment that can’t be elaborated on. You have to remember the moment, how you felt, then act on it in the present based on it.

I want to be a professional writer. I want to provide for my family in any way I can. I have a gift, an opportunity, to chase that dream with as much freedom as life can afford to me right now.

I can’t read the future, and anything I do from here on out might not help lead to anything new or better for myself or my family, but you reach a point where there’s nothing else to do but act. I think you have to, you know? I don’t think there’s any way for people in the same spot as me to proceed forward until the levy is full and the dam breaks.

It’s time time to go back.

Just listen to the first 18 seconds…

Thanks for reading,

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