My sniffling nose and red eyes told the tale. The crud, as I call it, visited me and gave no indication of leaving for quite some time. After trying to push through and keep going at my usual pace, I finally gave in and headed to bed.

Surrounding myself with reading material, notebook, pen and computer made me feel productive. However, productivity at this point was a joke. All the good intentions to at least get some writing done were just that, good intentions, as sleep engulfed me over and over.

After a few days of rest my mind woke up and was ready to roll, but the body, not so much. Lounging around has never been pleasant for me except in small doses. Toward the end of my convalescence in one afternoon I shopped online for a travel trailer, called all my kids (some of the less fortunate ones I called twice), wrote a story, planned a vacation, talked to my brother on his way to work and still had time left to contemplate my philosophy of life. I almost got bored, but the world is such an interesting place that I decided against it.

With the crud behind me and my energy coming back, I’m more thankful than ever for good health. I realize anew what a wonderful thing it is just to wake up in the morning and feel well. Today I needed to run errands, attend a civic club meeting, write a column, do a little laundry, fix supper and attend a church function in the evening.

While all of these things are good, when I was sick I took a hard look at my schedule and decided to cut out some nonessential activities. There are some things that I really want to do that will need a pretty big chunk of time. For instance, the book I want to write will never be written if I don’t carve out some time to devote to it. My awesome grandsons are growing up so fast, and I don’t want to be too busy to make memories with them either.

After my civic meeting today I hung around to speak to the president. My prepared speech did not go the way I had planned at all. Instead of graciously accepting my resignation, the president refused it. She said, “No, we don’t want that to happen. Just come to the meetings when you can and don’t feel guilty if you can’t participate in everything.”

Each carefully thought out reason for resigning was met by a reason I should stay. By the time the conversation ended I wondered what in the world I had been thinking. Trying to resign? Why, this was a wonderful opportunity to serve my community!

After buckling up my seatbelt and carefully backing out of the tight parking space my Toyota had been occupying, the realization hit me. I should have stuck to my guns. Sometimes good things keep us from the best thing.

Jan Penton Miller can be reached at lilsisjan@yahoo.com.