Got nailed by some stomach bug last night. Miserable ride, but got a little bit of a book read that’s been on the list while suffering. Taking today easy and slow, called off work. Fluids and toast kinda day.
So it goes…
I need to log in and report my sick days into a system because, in the US, you only get a certain number of allotted days to ‘be sick’ as if it is something within your control. I used many of my days while staying home to help Emily with cancer, but as a professor I can arrange for others to teach my classes and thus use fewer hours.
In large parts of Europe, they have way more sick days (up to a month in some cases), because it happens to us all and is unpredictable. I realized there was a certain cruelty to logging in and looking at how many days I ‘could be allowed’ to be sick.
My employers have been really kind and considerate about the health journey we’ve had this year. We’re lucky, in terms of US setups, to have flexibility in our jobs.
But as someone who spent 15 years freelancing, the idea that I can’t just take a day off when I am dragging for whatever reason (sickness, burnout, whatever) and control my own body, that has been the oddest adaptation of going into the ‘normal’ working world (being a professor isn’t normal, I know, but it is in the larger employment system) for me.
People drag themselves into work when sick all the time. They get other people around them sick. They barely get anything done.
But it’s some sort of adherence to a system that demands you sacrifice yourself on the altar of productivity. Many blame capitalism, and, sure, I’ll critique it as a system as a happily as the next. But there’s nothing inherent in the concept of “an economic system in which the means of production and distribution are privately or corporately owned and development occurs through the accumulation and reinvestment of profits gained in a free market” that means ‘and people should be destroyed by it.’
This is not capitalism as such, it’s just a set of cultural expectations that one certain capitalist country has.
And I don’t think it does any favors. It is estimated that it costs US firms $266 billion a year.
If you’re really a capitalist, you’ll stay home when sick, and encourage your employees to do the same.
But ultimately, like a lot of business decisions that are cloaked in the supposed logic of capitalism, it has nothing to do with worker productivity. People force themselves to go to work because bosses in many work cultures are often working in an authoritarian mode (see the book Bullshit Jobs, which posits a lot of dysfunction in the US comes from this, where boss’s create positions and hire for ego, not effective business), which means they expect to see you force yourself to come in because it makes them feel powerful and feel like people are committed, and employees are terrified of being fired (particularly in the US where firing is pretty much at-will).
So there’s intense cultural pressure to go into work for many of us.
Which is why, even though I have fifteen years of personal data to match the research, even knowing that resting, getting better, will make me more productive… I still feel like I’m pulling something off when I take a sick day.
Deprogramming is hard.
First of all, I’m really glad to see you back here, blogging!
Second of all, this post was really timely, as I too passed an unpleasant night due to stomach stuff. Sick days — and days off more generally — are a thing I’ve been thinking about more in recent years, as a conversation with other full-time writers (and with someone whose day job is in HR) made me realize just how much I would have grounds to sue my boss if my boss weren’t, um, me. I’ve started enforcing more of a rule that I get time off, and while initially that included a set number of sick days, after a while (and another comment from a fellow writer), I realized that was nonsense: I’m not beholden to someone else’s regulations in this regard, so why should I enforce them on myself?
Of course, it’s not quite that simple. Deadlines are deadlines, and missing them can have negative consequences, so there’s still incentive to work even if I’m not at my best (like today), or to periodically let things like “take the weekends off” slide. But I gave myself an entire week of vacation after finishing the most recent book draft to try and counterbalance the push before that. So far I have yet to actually take all my allotted days off in a year . . . but I’m taking off a lot more than I used to, which is progress!
This has to be a part of a lot of author burnout, I imagine.
Absolutely. And to your point about capitalism — I’m convinced it’s also the Puritan roots of the United States at work. Time off for relaxation is suspect, and triply so when your “job” isn’t a *real* job, because of course anything creative and enjoyable doesn’t count. So you must work ALL THE HARDER to make up for that.
I maaaay have been working lately on beating my Inner Puritan over the head with a baseball bat.
Yeah, because Japan and South Korea have workaholic societies as well, but there’s something self-flagellating about the US grind that’s tonally different (though all three work people to death, Japan and SK systems seem to take better care of you while doing it?) and seems related to the Puritanical thing.
Also, can I just say, I missed long, nuanced and thoughtful chats like this which seem to not happen as much on social media.
Yeah, I’ve found I’m gravitating toward setups — blogs and Discord, primarily — where it feels like you can have an actual *conversation*, rather than just volleying sound-bites back and forth.
(Though it seems I now can’t reply to your later messages, only the earlier one? Probably something limiting how deep a reply chain can go; I don’t know if you can change that, or if you want to.)
Discord has been a lifesaver since the pandemic.
Oh, the replies thing is annoying. I’m looking into that!!! Yes!