I’m sick, but I write. Is that self-exploitation or freedom?
When I still had a 9 to 5 job, I stayed at home when I was sick. Today I don’t have a boss anymore. I could go to bed and sleep when I am sick. But I don’t. Why? Read about it in this article.
Today I’m not doing well at all. My throat is scratching, my nose is clogged, and my head feels as if it has been poured with concrete.
I have a cold. I have little energy and could use sleep now. But I sit here and write another story.
Last week, my best-paid story earned me $4.15. So if I’m lucky, I could make a little more than four dollars on the article I’m writing now.
So why am I doing this to myself? Nobody forces me to work today. The money can’t really be the reason.
Of course, I hope that at some point, I will earn a lot of money writing articles, but it’s not that far yet. If I didn’t write an essay today, it would have almost no measurable impact on my income this month.
Nevertheless, my decision also has to do with money. Not with the money that this one article will bring me, but with the money that I will earn in a few months.
Don’t break the chain
I am downright obsessed with the subject of continuity. The knowledge that our fate is the sum of many small decisions makes me pay a lot of attention to little things in everyday life.
A cigarette won’t kill us; a piece of cake won’t make us fat. But thousands of cigarettes over decades will kill us, and hundreds of pieces of cake will make us fat over the years and perhaps give us diabetes.
That’s why I don’t smoke tobacco anymore and only eat cake on weekends.
What does that have to do with my decision to write even though I am sick?
Well, I don’t see today and my decision today as isolated events, but try to see things in a bigger context.
If I now give in to my desire to lie down instead of working, a learning process takes place in my brain. I signal to my mind that it is okay to be influenced by my sensitivities.
The next time I have a cold, I probably wouldn’t even think about it but would take a day off. What if I’m just tired? Hey, the brain says then. What’s the difference between the day when you were sick? If you feel bad, skip work.
Even a single interruption of the chain increases our willingness to break the chain again in the future. That is precisely what we have to avoid.
Not the circumstances influence what we do, but the way we think about the conditions
Back to the beginning of the article again: My neck is scratching, my nose is clogged, and my head feels as if it has been poured with concrete.
I have described how I feel at the moment. When I listen into myself, it is the feedback that my body gives me. They are, therefore, objective findings.
However, I have various options as to how I react to my body’s feedback.
For example, I might think, “If I felt like this, I didn’t go to work before. So that means that I am unable to work and therefore, I should rather not work today.
Or I could consider the following: In the past, I didn’t go to work with a cold because I didn’t want to infect my colleagues. Another reason was that I was too weak to get to work. But today I work from home. There is nobody here I can infect, and I don’t have a commuting route either. I can sit at the laptop and write an article. I only have a cold, not a life-threatening illness.
As you are reading this article, you can imagine which of these self-talks I had this morning.
So when I write this article even though I’m sick and feel really bad, it’s an expression of my freedom.
I did not exploit myself, as many of you might think. After this article, I will allow myself a bit of sleep — but only then. That, too, is freedom. In a regular job, I can’t come to the office, do the most crucial task of the day and then lie down for two hours.
I decided today not to break the chain, and this decision means freedom. But I also know when it’s enough. I didn’t do much today, but at least something.
And now I sleep for an hour. Tomorrow I will certainly feel better again.
See you later.
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