I had to think about whether to make this my 1000th post (as calculate by WordPress - LJ is wrong because some posts aren't crossposted and some are crossposted twice), but I decided to in the end because it's probably quite typical at the moment really.

I shouldn't be in tonight. I should be at a meeting about the National Rotaract Conference in 2009. We can start publicising it after this year's over the May Day bank holiday weekend, so this is the last meeting before that. I didn't make the last meeting because it got changed at the last minute. I made the one before, but before that I was ill, I think. And the one before that my back was bad, I think. There's a pattern here.

Last night I went out for a work social and someone decided a posh restaurant was a good idea. It never is because you can't get simple food there, but I could at least eat one thing. I had a good time, until the part this morning where I got to breakfast, stopped to think about it (which I don't do often) and realised I felt sick. The only thing that gets me the next day is wheat/gluten, so the only thing I can think of was the chips had a glaze on them - they were quite crispy, which was less nice.

I went into work anyway because although I felt tired and crap I knew I'd only feel worse being at home and thinking of all the work I had to do. Plus what I really needed was something to take my mind off it and being forced to think when you're feeling crap actually works quite well.

I was starving by lunchtime, but never quite lost the feeling of exhaustion and I spent the afternoon trying to decide if I was well enough to drive for an hour, have a meeting and then drive for an hour back. I've not driven that far for an evening to a strange place on my own before so the thought was a bit terrifying, but I wanted to do it to prove that I could.

It was probably quite fortunate that I didn't leave work till late. Not very late, but 20 minutes makes a big difference when you only have an hour between getting in and leaving if you leave on time. If I'd been more awake I would have managed to rush around and maybe made it there a bit late, but I just wasn't up to that. It was probably just as well that I didn't go because I'm really struggling now and I wouldn't have been home for another hour and a half.

This is what is so frustrating. I want to do things - maybe more things than I have time for, I don't know, I can never quite decide where the balance is - but there's always something going wrong. If it's not something I've eaten it's my back. The latter I'm waiting for the results of my x-ray, but the last doctor I saw was keen to get to the bottom of it because it doesn't make sense, so maybe that's fixable. The former isn't though. According to the nutritionists and doctors intolerances go away but I've tested mine and I can tell you mine aren't.

It's all making me feel like I'm not contributing to my commitments at all. The conference coordinator is nice enough about it, but I can't help feeling that if it was me I'd be wondering whether it was worth having me on the committee at all because I've barely done anything. Certainly not in comparison the amount of work other people have done. Although I know as booking coordinator my work will start in earnest next month, but that's not the point. By this stage it's only fair, and anyway, I knew what I was getting myself into when I signed up for it.

(BTW, I'll be turning 30 (sort of - whatever day my birthday actually is as far as I'm concerned it's bank holiday Monday) at Conference, so keep the Saturday of the May Day bank holiday weekend free and come and help celebrate)

And it's really hacking me off. Most of the time it's alright because people are used to me bringing my own food, or let me pick restaurants based on whether I can eat something on the menu. But for once it would be nice to be able to schedule going out with whether I have time to be ill, just in case (which I failed to do this time), or to be able to go on holiday without first having to negotiate with the airline (I just booked my flight to Canada in October and you can only have on meal preference, which isn't helpful when you want lactose and gluten free) or bringing my own food. I managed to be completely self-sufficient at Eastercon but only because I had a suitcase (and a few bags) full of food. If I hadn't taken all that food I could have fit everything in a backpack.

I just want to be normal. That shouldn't be too much to ask, should it?

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