One of my goals with our recent holiday was to not get ill after I got back. Over Christmas we went away for a week and then had a guest the following week and then when work/school started I immediately got ill and ended up taking 2 days of sick leave.
This time I felt pretty good when we got back from Portugal. We left on Thursday the 26th and got back on Saturday the 4th.
Sunday (the 5th) was Easter Sunday and we did a local Easter trail in the morning
I tried to take it a bit easy after having almost 2 weeks off work but mostly I felt unfocused AND I found some errors in work I had done before I left and mostly I felt a bit blah about being in work and didn't accomplish as much as I would have liked.
I figured all was fine as long as I could really get back into flow this week. I'm still settling into the job I started in October and sometimes I feel way more confident and sometimes way less and right now I'm in a bit of a "less" state.
3 days of work later and it was the weekend again, and my Aunt was visiting us from the states. She arrived Thursday after work.
On Friday I dropped Lily at a play date and Ezra went to the in-laws for the morning while I took Aubrey and Clara and my Aunt to see THE MOON which is guesting at a local museum
Sunday we went to another local museum since the weather was a bit meh all weekend and the museum had both indoor and outdoor areas
We also went out to lunch with my Aunt. We have entered a new world where the big kids can enjoy eating at restaurants! It's very exciting... if only there were restaurants near us that I particularly like. But it does mean when we have visitors we may be able to enjoy future lunches and maybe new foods are on the horizon for everyone.
Sunday afternoon I went to a playdate with the big kids, and Sunday evening we had a grocery order delivered while I called my dad and then we went to bed by 10 because life is tiring.
Yesterday (Monday) I got up at 5:30, had my coffee, did my planner/calendar stuff, had my second coffee, packed lunches and snacks for the kids, got kids up, made breakfast, and everyone made it to school/childcare by 8:30.
At 11:00 I just couldn't figure out why it was so cold, and why I couldn't think. My hands were cold. Also, my legs were sore. Was it the 20 minute workout I did on Saturday? Unlikely. Around 12:30 I realized.. .I'm ill. Waah. I took a lunchtime nap (I would say this is a working from home win, but my office also has a "quiet room" where I have been known to lie down when I was early pregs with the twins). I dragged through the evening and bedtime and this morning I still didn't feel great (even though I had 9 hours of sleep)
One of the tricky things with working from home is... when does one take a sick day? If I had to go into the office I would definitely be calling in sick. But since I'm at home, is it better to work at quarter speed rather than booking a day off? Maybe I can do some simple data tasks while wrapped up in a blanket?
I am fairly sure what I am going to do is work at slow speed today rather than booking a sick day, but if anyone asked me what they should do in this instance I would advise them to take a sick day. Hmm.
In other news, we have another busy weekend coming up, but then hopefully some downtime. I realize those in the US enter MAYCEMBER and in the UK we just enter... 2 more more months of school. I'm looking forward to the school.
Do you feel different about taking sick days when you are working from home vs. in an office? Do you have different standards for sick days for yourself vs. what you would recommend to others?
I pretty much always worked when I was sick, regardless of whether it was in the office or at home. Back in the office days, I wouldn't go in for the first day or so of being sick, so sick days were WFH days. Now mind you, I was not putting in full effort, I was only keeping up with tasks that had to be done. I also never had a cold that just lasted for a day or two, they always last for 1-2 weeks, which was beyond the time that I could be away from the office.
ReplyDeleteThe nice thing about the WFH era is that I did not get sick nearly as often.
Do I have different standards for myself vs others for sick days? Of course! For other people, I say that the world will not end if you take a day off, and that sick time was meant to be used. But for myself, I always found that if I was out of the office for more than one day, I would get a lot of side eye from my coworkers. I wonder now if this was real or imagined.
Anyway, get better soon!