This weekend I got food poisoning. If there is a good side to food poisoning as opposed to any other illness, its dark period happens hard and fast. A cold or the flu can leave you stricken for days at a time, but food poisoning comes and goes. I will spare you the gory details, but I went from hugging a toilet bowl to being able to take a walk in about 24 hours.
That isn’t to say that there are no lingering side effects. I am in pain. Anything that has to do with the core of my body screams the minute I try to use it. Walking is fine, but bending over to pick something up is torture. It hurts to laugh.
Being sick is a good reason(or excuse) to stop anything that doesn’t feel good. You get a pass to quit by friends and family. People excuse work when you don’t feel well. When it comes to physical work, increasing the pressure when it results in physical pain isn’t just a bad thing, it is foolish. If you continue to climb Mount Everest when you have the flu then you are asking for trouble.
When it comes to mental strain, it is easy to disregard and fall into the same trap. An illness like food poisoning isn’t harming the mind, only the body. Yesterday, I fell into letting my mind rest as well as my body.
In the vein of “getting better” I didn’t write a list of to-do’s. In the vein of getting better, I didn’t set up my calendar, in the vein of “getting better” I didn’t run through my appointments for the week. None of these things would put me in physical pain or lead to discomfort, but I disregarded them because of my sickness. The result of it led me to start the week behind.
I am not writing this to beat myself up. It is far to easy to think in black and white terms. I am writing this as a reminder that one ailment isn’t a blank pass at relaxation. It is a reminder that just because my legs hurt, doesn’t mean my arms need ice.
From the desk of Adam Thomas 