NECK TEST

Was it lifting the wooden sleepers which were a bit too heavy to 
handle alone? Was it bending over an engine bay while removing some 
old fuel injector hoses supposed to be replaced last weekend? Was 
it bending over a laptop I had out to duplicate my backups when I 
was too lazy to grab the stand to bring the screen up to a 
comfortable height? Or was it pushing through the initial 
discomfort while doing my pre-bed push-ups the night before it got 
really bad? Or countless other possibilities? While waiting for my 
neck to heal these thoughts to the origins of its agony have been 
circling around in my head constantly for the last four days while 
I moan around hopelessly, alternating from silence in bed, to the 
still-tiring noise of entertainment on TV, to the shrieks of pain 
as I thrash around trying to use the kitchen. Just a sore neck, 
nothing new, but an extended case, and now the old dilemma of when 
to go back to trying to do things.

I've kept up sending out orders, but I was supposed to return to a 
project I put on hold to deal with my tax return and applying the 
tariff charges to orders from the USA (which has turned out to be 
proper pain in the neck all of itself). After this weekend I really 
hoped to be back in action, and indeed it seemed the constant pain 
was reduced this morning to just constant discomfort. But here in 
fact is the test, typing this on my laptop, one-handed with the 
other supporting my head, and again the pain is creeping up along 
with my 9AM start-work time. Am I being undiciplined? I'm a bit out 
of passion for this project - in seeking to make something other 
people want to buy these days it's all about working on the 
firmware code rather than real electronics designed on paper and 
with logic tied together by solder alone. Is it an excuse? No, I 
can't stand much more of typing this whinge, so thinking properly 
about code would be way out. Away with the laptop for another day, 
or at least until I'm due to prepare those orders and shriek my way 
into the car to drop them at the post office.

 - The Free Thinker.