I do this thing when I’m sick where I sit on the couch and plague myself with guilt.  I look at what needs to be cleaned, I look at all the emails I should answer, I think about my To Do list, I think about what’s critical and what’s not critical, I think about my overall life goals and I just berate myself for not having the energy to get up and do any of it.  It’s like a tenfold mid-life crisis every time I’m sick.  I could be feverish and dizzy and it doesn’t matter. I could be pathetically tied to the toilet.  I tell myself that if I was truly driven, that if I really wanted to get somewhere, that if I was adhering to the habits of highly successful people (I don’t remember how many habits there are because I didn’t read the book… ALSO on my To Do list!) then I would be working even when I’m sick! I would be pushing through. Because that’s what the successful people do. I’m not doing anything else while I’m stuck at home so why am I NOT writing the great American novel?!  I mean how sick am I really?  Not that sick!  Stop messing around, you slacker!

Then after days of that going through my head, one morning I’ll wake up and start doing dishes or answering emails and it’s not even a question of when I’m going to poop out because I have energy and I just get to work.  Clear-headed, motivated, and (relatively) guilt-free. (It’s never totally gone, you know.)  And that’s about the time I realize, “Yes, I WAS sick.”  I wouldn’t have been quite so depressed and tired otherwise. I probably WOULD have had some energy to do something. Maybe I shouldn’t be so hard on myself.  But then how would I motivate myself when I do have energy?  And there the voices go again.

So my real problem is… figuring out when to listen to the voices and when to tell them to just shut the hell up.

I can’t be the only one who does this, right?