Hopefully Covid shifts it quick and doesn't linger around. I ghost wrote an article for my father regarding "long covid" and it seems a not insignificant amount of people have had symptoms for a prolonged period of time.
That being said, they usually began with more severe symptoms and then tapered off to the milder cold/flu like symptoms as described, but either way, hope you feel better soon.
"This is why the schoolchild contrives his scampish Ferriss Buellerisms (affected cough, groaning, feinted loss of appetite, tin of minestrone down the toilet as ersatz vomit etc etc)."
I would love to know how many people I admire did everything possible to skip as much school as they could - I've pulled a sickie dozens of times, while my siblings have never missed so much a day.
It's usually coupled with a healthy lack of respect for authority - that being respect which hasn't been earned. You respect those that have done something to earn it, why should you respect a dick of a manager, or a teacher on a power trip?
You can still be respectful without respecting someones authority over you i.e. you don't have to be a dick about it. Perhaps it's Bartleby's influence, but a simple "I would prefer not to", goes along way in avoiding obligations.
"What people at the office will think, what work they might fall behind on, how the boss will react. Work as religion must still be in the ascendance because I see people martyr themselves to it all the time."
Idleness takes clarity of mind. It takes a great deal of self-knowledge to deliberately do nothing, when you're supposed to be doing something, and not feel guilty about it.
Because it's the guilt that kills you, that cuts into your ability to enjoy the free time you've carved out for yourself, the feeling that you should be doing something, that's what leads you into the land of "info-tainment", semi-work, not quite productive and not quite relaxing, feeling like you're doing something but actually achieving nothing.
"First of all: a four week leave from work, can you imagine? How far we’ve fallen from the glorious heights of the aristocratic disdain for work and the husbandmans method of doing what was required and nothing more before bunking off to the pub for a pint and a few hands of cards."
I have always felt that my laziness had an aristocratic element to it. Taleb, again, springing to mind: "Only in recent history has "working hard" signaled pride rather than shame for lack of talent, finesse, and, mostly, sprezzatura."
I'm digging up the dead horse to give him a quick punt in the head here, but can you think of anything more apt to describe the problem with 'hustle' culture?
One thing I learned in my CS degree - automate everything boring and repetitive. The world belongs to the clever and lazy. Let the robots do the work, let's go to the pub instead.
"Savvy?"
Understood Captain Sparrow.
Love the DH Lawrence poem.
For some odd reason, it reminded me of Michael Porfirio.
Maybe it's the delivery, maybe it's along the lines of "the animals are much more free than us", but either way it resonated with me, so thank you for sharing it.
It feels as though the third section is one giant personal reminder to yourself, from one Tom to another. Hopefully, it sticks and you have an enjoyable, relatively painless period of convalescnece.
A spot on post and much needed by me. Recovering from knee surgery, I fall into the somewhat 'typical American' mindset that resting up is a sign of weakness and I should be back up and running as soon as possible. True this form, I pushed this recovery too fast and now I'm falling behind. We don't emphasize rest and recovery near enough and I'm glad you do.
Another great one, Tom. This one hit home for me, working in the addiction and recovery world. Because you cannot rush recovery - and that's the first tendency, to get excited about how good life feels free from substances, floating in the "pink cloud" of those first few weeks, without giving it time to sink in.
Also reminds me of how the Ancient Greeks would describe such plight - whether addiction or depression or perhaps some other illness - as a message from your body, or your Daimon. The message: you are out of alignment with your soul's purpose. So pay attention, listen, and slow down.
If this is you writing when you are sick, perhaps you should get sick more often, ha! Loved it.
This explains why (when I am particularly stressed and overworked) I fantasize about coming down with some horrific illness, injury, or family emergency... so I'll have an excuse to call in to my multitude of commitments and say, "oh, sorry, a meteorite has struck my house and destroyed it - I won't be able to show up or do anything for the foreseeable future." Of course, my second thought is always, "how foolish! You would be devastated." But escape fantasies have always been my favorite. As a chronically industrious person, I have learned to appreciate the art of convalescence. It is truly a balm and I'm glad you enjoyed your gift of time.
Well done, Tom. Always enjoy a newsletter where I can delight in a casually dropped "Quisling" and a subtle link to a post-War film noir.
First of all: we hope to have you back in full fighting form soon; with that said, it doesn't seem we lost much—and perhaps even gained something—from your bout with the virus. You've managed to turn it into a pearl of wisdom.
I often wonder if "getting sick" these days is nature's way of doing something that we no longer know how to do for ourselves: taking a break. You think you're visiting the (home) sanitarium, but you're really going to the Magic Mountain. There's a pearl in it somewhere to be gained—or not gained. Each one could comprise a short story written as a bildungsroman.
Covid aside: how many times is feeling *sick* really just a matter of burnout? At least in the case of my fellow Americans—and certainly for myself in my hard-charging work-a-holic 20's—I can see that the symptoms of sickness were actually burnout at least half of the time.
There's a good book by Byung-Chul Han called "The Burnout Society" linking social problems to virus transmission and immunology. (René Girard did the same thing by surmising that ancient societies invented myths about plagues and viruses to cover up what were really social problems—social contagion.) This battle between sickness and health and our short-lived homeostasis is just the stuff of life. And too often it's only addressed on a physical level.
I didn't know "thrive" was part of the etymology of convalescence. Gives another meaning to The Sickness Unto Death; may there also be a sickness unto life?
In lieu of being able to bring you a hot bowl of soup, thought I'd drop into the comments away from the "Huge, uneducated, primitive shit hole where everybody is an expert on the subject and they all have to share an opinion." (Sometimes Urban Dictionary seems too British to be American...). Get well mate. All sickness makes a future warm whiskey sliding down the throat on a cold winter's day, good paperback in hand, taste that much better.
Hopefully Covid shifts it quick and doesn't linger around. I ghost wrote an article for my father regarding "long covid" and it seems a not insignificant amount of people have had symptoms for a prolonged period of time.
That being said, they usually began with more severe symptoms and then tapered off to the milder cold/flu like symptoms as described, but either way, hope you feel better soon.
"This is why the schoolchild contrives his scampish Ferriss Buellerisms (affected cough, groaning, feinted loss of appetite, tin of minestrone down the toilet as ersatz vomit etc etc)."
I would love to know how many people I admire did everything possible to skip as much school as they could - I've pulled a sickie dozens of times, while my siblings have never missed so much a day.
It's usually coupled with a healthy lack of respect for authority - that being respect which hasn't been earned. You respect those that have done something to earn it, why should you respect a dick of a manager, or a teacher on a power trip?
You can still be respectful without respecting someones authority over you i.e. you don't have to be a dick about it. Perhaps it's Bartleby's influence, but a simple "I would prefer not to", goes along way in avoiding obligations.
"What people at the office will think, what work they might fall behind on, how the boss will react. Work as religion must still be in the ascendance because I see people martyr themselves to it all the time."
Idleness takes clarity of mind. It takes a great deal of self-knowledge to deliberately do nothing, when you're supposed to be doing something, and not feel guilty about it.
Because it's the guilt that kills you, that cuts into your ability to enjoy the free time you've carved out for yourself, the feeling that you should be doing something, that's what leads you into the land of "info-tainment", semi-work, not quite productive and not quite relaxing, feeling like you're doing something but actually achieving nothing.
"First of all: a four week leave from work, can you imagine? How far we’ve fallen from the glorious heights of the aristocratic disdain for work and the husbandmans method of doing what was required and nothing more before bunking off to the pub for a pint and a few hands of cards."
I have always felt that my laziness had an aristocratic element to it. Taleb, again, springing to mind: "Only in recent history has "working hard" signaled pride rather than shame for lack of talent, finesse, and, mostly, sprezzatura."
I'm digging up the dead horse to give him a quick punt in the head here, but can you think of anything more apt to describe the problem with 'hustle' culture?
One thing I learned in my CS degree - automate everything boring and repetitive. The world belongs to the clever and lazy. Let the robots do the work, let's go to the pub instead.
"Savvy?"
Understood Captain Sparrow.
Love the DH Lawrence poem.
For some odd reason, it reminded me of Michael Porfirio.
Maybe it's the delivery, maybe it's along the lines of "the animals are much more free than us", but either way it resonated with me, so thank you for sharing it.
It feels as though the third section is one giant personal reminder to yourself, from one Tom to another. Hopefully, it sticks and you have an enjoyable, relatively painless period of convalescnece.
Get well soon mate,
Conor.
A spot on post and much needed by me. Recovering from knee surgery, I fall into the somewhat 'typical American' mindset that resting up is a sign of weakness and I should be back up and running as soon as possible. True this form, I pushed this recovery too fast and now I'm falling behind. We don't emphasize rest and recovery near enough and I'm glad you do.
Another great one, Tom. This one hit home for me, working in the addiction and recovery world. Because you cannot rush recovery - and that's the first tendency, to get excited about how good life feels free from substances, floating in the "pink cloud" of those first few weeks, without giving it time to sink in.
Also reminds me of how the Ancient Greeks would describe such plight - whether addiction or depression or perhaps some other illness - as a message from your body, or your Daimon. The message: you are out of alignment with your soul's purpose. So pay attention, listen, and slow down.
If this is you writing when you are sick, perhaps you should get sick more often, ha! Loved it.
This explains why (when I am particularly stressed and overworked) I fantasize about coming down with some horrific illness, injury, or family emergency... so I'll have an excuse to call in to my multitude of commitments and say, "oh, sorry, a meteorite has struck my house and destroyed it - I won't be able to show up or do anything for the foreseeable future." Of course, my second thought is always, "how foolish! You would be devastated." But escape fantasies have always been my favorite. As a chronically industrious person, I have learned to appreciate the art of convalescence. It is truly a balm and I'm glad you enjoyed your gift of time.
Well done, Tom. Always enjoy a newsletter where I can delight in a casually dropped "Quisling" and a subtle link to a post-War film noir.
First of all: we hope to have you back in full fighting form soon; with that said, it doesn't seem we lost much—and perhaps even gained something—from your bout with the virus. You've managed to turn it into a pearl of wisdom.
I often wonder if "getting sick" these days is nature's way of doing something that we no longer know how to do for ourselves: taking a break. You think you're visiting the (home) sanitarium, but you're really going to the Magic Mountain. There's a pearl in it somewhere to be gained—or not gained. Each one could comprise a short story written as a bildungsroman.
Covid aside: how many times is feeling *sick* really just a matter of burnout? At least in the case of my fellow Americans—and certainly for myself in my hard-charging work-a-holic 20's—I can see that the symptoms of sickness were actually burnout at least half of the time.
There's a good book by Byung-Chul Han called "The Burnout Society" linking social problems to virus transmission and immunology. (René Girard did the same thing by surmising that ancient societies invented myths about plagues and viruses to cover up what were really social problems—social contagion.) This battle between sickness and health and our short-lived homeostasis is just the stuff of life. And too often it's only addressed on a physical level.
I didn't know "thrive" was part of the etymology of convalescence. Gives another meaning to The Sickness Unto Death; may there also be a sickness unto life?
In lieu of being able to bring you a hot bowl of soup, thought I'd drop into the comments away from the "Huge, uneducated, primitive shit hole where everybody is an expert on the subject and they all have to share an opinion." (Sometimes Urban Dictionary seems too British to be American...). Get well mate. All sickness makes a future warm whiskey sliding down the throat on a cold winter's day, good paperback in hand, taste that much better.