One day of being sick is easy enough to deal with. It’s like a special holiday that you commemorate by wearing a hat that’s two sizes too small and a poorly-tailored lead suit that’s too tight in the neck and presses uncomfortably into the small of your back. Also, your sinuses are filled with putty. After you have completed the ritual emailing to tell people you’re staying home, the rest of the day is yours to get strung out on Listerine and watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer DVDs. If you get better, you can return to your normal life the next day without missing too much and regale your colleagues with your tales of mucus.
If it goes on to a second day, however, the guilt sets in. There is stuff you are supposed to be doing, and you can’t do it properly, which means it isn’t getting done. If you get up and try to do some of it, you might not recuperate with optimum efficiency, and its crucial that you do because you need to be well to do the stuff you are supposed to be doing, which you promised people you would do, and maybe you should just go and do the stuff even if it makes you sicker, but then you’d likely make other people sick.
Under these circumstances, it is important to formulate some small, achievable daily goals to accomplish so that you feel like you’re at least achieving some forward motion with life. Yesterday I went to the supermarket and bought some yoghurt, and brought it back. Today I have ironed two shirts, and it’s not even mid-day yet. With simple steps like these I will gradually finish my PhD, my play and comics, and all the other projects in my life that I can’t complete topless with no yoghurt.