Sick Leave.

I woke up today with a cold. It’s not surprising; my dad and my brother both have colds and when you live in a house with two people who are ill, you’re quite likely to fall ill.

My instinct when I’m ill…assuming I’m this kind of ill, where I am relatively fine, rather than if I am actually throwing up or delirious with fever or something…is to battle through it. This probably stems from four years of being in full time education where I was working towards important exams and missing lessons and catching up was stressful and I preferred to go to school and deal with feeling ill and crap.

But today I made a very conscious effort not to do that. There’s quite a lot of stuff I need to get done; I’m going to New Mexico in August and in addition to needing to sort out stuff for that, it’s compressed the amount of time I have to do all the other things I have to do over summer. After I’ve written this blog post I’m probably gonna write myself a very long to do list for tomorrow.

But I’m more likely to be able to get through that to do list because I’ve given myself a break today to let my body somewhat recover. Knowing me-with-a-cold, this cold will probably linger for ages, but at least, by resting, I’m more likely to get through this initial actually-feeling-really-crap-rather-than-just-sniffy stage. If I’d gone with my instinct to power through I’d have defiantly got through more today, but I’d have prolonged me being ill and sluggish and in terms of effort to productivity; my productivity over the next few days would have been lower than it’s, hopefully, gonna be.

I also need to be aware that how I rest mentally is very different to how I should rest if I’m ill. Doing what I’ve done today…mostly watching lots of Modern Family and the Simpsons, as well as sleeping till gone noon…doesn’t make me feel mentally rested; it actually makes me feel restless. If I need a break from things I’m best off reading or seeing friends; but those, especially the latter, are not conducive to encouraging my immune system to fighting off a cold.

I certainly feel better than I did this morning, and hopefully tomorrow fighting the urge to power through being ill will have paid off and I’ll feel a lot better.