Dissociation

Having got sick almost the moment I arrived back home from vacation makes me feel like I've been gone the whole summer. I'm a bit out of it. Today I'm expected to brave the heat and spend the afternoon poolside with a gaggle of 7-year-olds. Not sure how I will fare since I am at about 70% power. I've realized over the past couple of days that my sense of smell is greatly limited, and it's distressing. It's as if I can smell what is going on in my head (sinuses), but cannot smell what's going on around me. It's an odd feeling, like the one that rushes over you when you're being anesthetized for surgery. 

This just means a slight delay in the fall plans for goods in the shop. Solids are on the agenda, two coffretts, one for fall and one for winter. And soap. I've got a big soap commission in the works, a few kilos of post-enfleurage, post-extraction pomade that's to be made into laundry bars and shipped back to their rightful owner for resale. I actually like making custom soaps. It takes all of the guesswork out and leaves me with the fun of using new materials virtually risk-free. But nothing is going to happen today. Perhaps even tomorrow or the next day, nothing will happen. I'm just not there yet. And I've got video tutorials to prep for the new course and I'm definitely not there. 

When I post this, I'm going out to the studio to do a little olfaction work -- kick start the process of regaining my sense of smell before venturing out into the world. I think I will also do some work on the olfaction processes taught in the courses as well since I currently have a birdseye view of it all. I think the feeling I can relate to with this lack of olfactory function is 'dissociation'. I feel completely cut off from the world like I'm on the wrong side of the glass.