25 days of writing: day eleven
Day 11: What does your character do on a daily basis? What is their job? Do they have one? Write a scene from a normal day in your character’s life.
Shona was on the verge of failing at her job, and that was a situation she had never been in. There was this stupid project she was handling, to get a bunch of fund fact sheets updated in English, Singapore Chinese and Simplified Chinese (what was the difference anyway?), everything laid out prettily, approved by local offices and out on time. The problems were multiple, including but not limited to the fact that the template had changed but some idiot had inserted all the data in the old template and now she was supposed to get every mentally challenged link of the production chain to understand what belonged to template and what belonged to the fact sheet, the fact that according to DTP the files had been done in Illustrator instead of a proper DTP software which was equal to trying to create a drawing with a make-up pencil, and the fact that Shona’s body was changing faster than if she was pregnant.
Luckily, she was not pregnant and the changes were not visible outwards. Her inability to carry out her work was the only external sign of what she had started calling the buzz.
Apparently, mind, body and emotions were interlinked. New information fed to her mind caused changes in her body. She had never thought such a thing would be possible but, then again, she had never been fed a bunch of information quite as dramatic as the one come to her that summer.
The feeling was somewhere midway between limbs that had fallen asleep and the sensation of holding breath for too long, like a not-quite-there itch with pressure from the inside. When she walked, it was more bearable but when she was sitting down, let alone lying in her bed, it was like being on some sort of new age treatment bed non-stop. Sleeping was tremendously difficult and that did not help.
“Your energy levels are rising,” was the explanation she had been given. “It’s normal, and it will go away in time. When it will, you will find yourself missing it. It’s addictive.”
Shona did not believe in energy levels, but she had already seen seven doctors including a GP, a rheumatoid specialist, a neurologist and two different kinds of specialists on brain-originated ghost sensations, and all had declared that what Shona had was probably caused by stress or plain muscular tension. Because of the latter assessment, she had seen a massage therapist, an orthopaedic and a chiropractor - no avail.
More unsettling was the way proof of the contrary kept flowing in. People, stories, questions answered, other people going through the same. She went with the flow, and wondered to herself when it would be a good time to tell her crush that she was actually an atheist, just that she was really badly in love with him and her body felt strange.
Tapping away another angry email on her computer, cutting and pasting Chinese screenshots as email attachments and drinking her fourth cup of espresso, she was fully aware that her thoughts were conflicted to say the least. It was difficult to think straight when one had to deal with fingers burning from the inside and a content team unable to get the bloody figures right. The deadline was only a few days away and she already knew with full certainty that she would not make it. She knew that it would lead to a chat with her manager, and she was terribly afraid that she would resign on the spot.
Whether it was because her body was itching or because she wanted to follow that insanely handsome man, she was not sure. And that was the core of the problem.