Not Going To Work Today

I'm not going to work today. I might not, in fact, go to work for the rest of the week. And yet, instead of being curled up in bed cursing the world, I'm using some of my energy to write a blog post.

Energy that could go on work.

On a logical level, this makes sense. Even if I could use some of my energy on work today, if that would leave me unable to carry out all the other tasks I need to do to keep functioning, then I actually do not have the energy to work. But it's very hard to drown out the overwhelming narrative that work should be the last thing to go.

Even my helpful CFS leaflets assume this. "You've probably given up fun things to focus on productive things" they say, but in fact I just belligerently do the fun things and then force myself to do the productive things because doing the fun things at the expense of the productive things would be wrong. And then I panic that if I admit that I have a life outside of work to my boss, he will secretly think "could she not be working full time instead of going out gallivanting with her friends?" and then some sort of consequence will come from that but I don't know what, because the one time I got to the disciplinary hearing stage it came completely out of the blue.

So I'm writing this, because I think a lot of other people feel a sense of panic when they're in that stage where they can't reasonably drag themselves into work for a full day, but they can do the washing up or write a small unedited blog post or go through a mental health workbook. Especially because nobody else seems to do this. Everyone else in my office drags themselves in, and even on sick days any small amount of energy they can muster goes on answering emails. But I suppose I've been neglecting the fact that they don't have a chronic illness, and if they don't do their washing for a few days they can reasonably expect to catch up, whereas I can easily find myself too tired to hang out clothes.

Hopefully my unedited and rambly thoughts will convince people that it's okay to use sick time to do life admin (and maybe watch some Netflix). And for the love of god, if you are usually healthy, use your fucking sick time when you need it. Think of it as a contribution to the mental health of the chronically ill.