2010
things i’m bad at
maura @ 5:51 pm
I’m sick, and it’s a drag. I know: alert the media! No one likes being sick, but this sickness was sneaky, which seems extra-unfair. I guess it’s a head cold: I’m achey and sniffly, and my main symptom is an annoying, intermittent hacking cough.
I admit that I have been known to try to work through my illness, to not use my sick days, etc. But lately I’ve tried to change my ways. I started feeling sick last weekend and I took it easy, really I did! Then I didn’t get any better, but I didn’t get any worse, either: after a shower, a cup of coffee and 2 advil in the morning I felt pretty okay. So I went into work and kept taking it easy at home. I mean, it’s not like I’m doing hard labor on a dig — many days my job involves mostly sitting at a computer or sitting in a meeting.
Yesterday morning I started feeling slightly worse, but it was my last day of class (student presentations!) and the last meeting of a committee I co-chaired (elections!) so I had to and wanted to go in. Last night it was clear that I was actually sick, so I’m home today coughing, drinking tea and alternating between convalescing in the living room and the bedroom.
During extra-busy times I’ve been guilty of occasionally wishing I’d get sick so I could have an excuse to rest all day, who hasn’t? But the reality is always much more boring and less enjoyable than I imagine. Because in my daydreams of course I forget that sickness slows down your brain, so it’s not like you can catch up on anything. It is nice to have the chance to read, esp. when you have a good book: a neighbor lent me her British copy of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest (which is awesome since by the time I remembered to request a copy from the public library I was #252 in the queue, and of course it’s not even out here yet). And now that I have a laptop I can check email whilst reclining and sipping tea, which is also good.
But I hate how a sick day sloooooows to a crawl. I always feel like I’m missing everything going on in the real world, and that things are just piling up while time goes down the toilet. I want being sick to be like any other work. Today I worked at getting better. I worked hard and put in my 8 hours, why don’t I feel any better? How many days of work will it take until I finish this sickness project, anyway? This was not in the original spec. Where’s a good project manager when you need one?
