I have not been this sick inβ¦.years? I honestly don’t remember a time in recent memory when I’ve felt this awful. I’m so glad we’re vaccinated because I can’t imagine what COVID would have been like for us without it.
It’s a combination of the worst head cold I’ve ever had, combined with a splitting headache, exhaustion, dizziness, nausea, distorted hearing, and a persistent cough that only mildly abates when I take enough cold meds to knock out a small farm animal, but sleep isn’t easy, because that seems to trigger the coughing. It’s a vicious cycle that seems to be repeating. I’m on Day 5 of this and until this evening, as I’m typing this with a mild burst of energy, I would have told you it was getting worse, and not better.
How this Began
This all started right after my birthday after we returned home from our travels. I scheduled a few days after our Philadelphia trip to finish some of the tasks I had to complete to get my course, Master Classroom: Reflection & Roadmap, 2023 up and running in time for the original launch date, yesterday, December 26.
Those major tasks were:
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Recording and editing videos
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Finishing the Tana template
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Finishing the Digital Workbook
The day I sat down to record, my head cold had started. I pondered what to do about this, because I was so not feeling like being on camera. I’d already made my way through more than one tissue box at this point so no amount of makeup was going to fix my Rudolph-style (red) nose.
I quickly decided that voiceover (audio only) with a combination of b-roll (stock video) and slides was going to have to be fine. The more I thought about it, I decided that this was better than my original plan.
You see, my goal is for people to engage in their very personal & intimate journey of reflection about their past year, and to complete their goal setting for 2024 in this course.
You don’t need to see my face to do that. π
I’m really pleased with how the audio turned out. Especially the later lessons, because that’s when the coughing started. There was a lot of starting and stopping to get those done.
Next Up: Video Editing
After I finished recording the videos, I moved on to the video editing. This is when I cut out unnecessary silences, deleted repeated / messed up lines, added stock video and other effects for interest, slides to support the presentation, and music as needed.
This is also when the coughing really kicked into gear. And I mean hacking-style coughing. It is extremely challenging to edit video while coughing. π― would not recommend.
I ended up using the “undo” button quite a bit. Imagine trimming the video on the timeline to just the right spot while in the midst of coughing. Yeah, it wasn’t pretty. But I got through it. π€£
(And there are NO COUGHS in the video lessons! Quite frankly, I don’t even think I sound sick, which I’m rather impressed with.)
π Tana Template & Digital Workbook Design
In between editing the videos, I worked on the Tana template and the Digital Workbook design. You might be thinking at this point (because I know I would be!), it seems like you waited until the last minute to get this done!
Here’s the deal: I scheduled work sessions over three days to get these remaining tasks done, thinking it would take about half the time I had allotted. All of these tasks were already in progress and this is not my first rodeo with course design. I’ve been professionally designing courses as an educator for over twenty years.
But it is the first time that I did so while being this sick and it totally didn’t cross my mind that I’d be so sick that it would turn into extremely fragmented six days of very slow progress work sessions.
π Launch Day
Launch day arrived yesterday and I let customers know what was going on – that content would be delayed and why (illness).
I know what it’s like to purchase something and not be able to have access for unknown reasons. It’s frustrating and makes you wonder if you purchased a legit product. I didn’t want that to happen so I tried to be extremely proactive and communicative in this regard.
My customers have been so nice! I’m truly grateful for their kind messages and understanding. π
βοΈ Today
As of today, everything is finally sorted out.
All content is loaded β , the Tana Template & Digital Workbooks are available β , Discord permissions have been sorted out β , and I discovered this surprise:
My husband, Peter, took it upon himself to, unbeknownst to me, purchase both of my active products (at full price no less! I would have given him free coupon codes!! π€―) so he could see what was going on with my Discord when I shared with him reports that there were some permissions issues going on. He then posted the message in my Discord Community that you see below.
I thought it would be quite some time before I could bring on tech support for Systematic You but it seems like Christmas really did arrive for me this year. Peter is truly the best.
All in all, I’m tired, but I’m supremely grateful, and working towards recovery one day at a time.
Thank you to everyone who has supported me! I appreciate your encouragement.