How to not not work full time

August 24, 2011

My current goal is to not work full time in a 9-5 kind of job.  Sounds nice, right?  But I’m stuck on the making-it-happen part.

Health-wise, things have been getting worse over the last year.  Working full time is really not helping.  I don’t qualify for long term disability, and even if I did, it wouldn’t pay the bills.  I could get short term disability.  I’ve thought about that.  I’ve discussed it with my doctor and, to a limited extent, with my employer.  The thing is, it would only be a temporary solution.  It wouldn’t solve the problem.

So now my thinking goes like this: I could do some sort of free-lance consulting.  Then I could set my own hours, and keep things more flexible.  When I got sick, I’d lose money, but I wouldn’t have to deal with a boss.  Yeah, that’s a great idea.

Of course, until I get the free-lance consulting off the ground, until I’m earning some significant money, I have to keep my job.  That means that I’m trying to start a business in addition to working full time.  As you’ve probably guessed, this is not going well.  I get a lot of work done on the business once or twice a week, and nothing in between.  Still, I’m trying.  And I’m trying to stay positive, even with setbacks like what I had today.

Today was tough.  There was a networking event tonight.  I know the group hosting it, and so I know a lot about the people who were going to attend: the perfect demographic for my venture.  This was it, my first chance to really get clients!  And what happens?  Last night I started feeling the beginning of a downswing.  This morning, it was all I could do to get to work.  By the time I left work, all I could do was drag myself home.  Obviously, I had to skip the event.

But I know there will be more opportunities.  And until then, I’ll just keep working in slow, incremental steps.  Hopefully, one year from now I’ll be earning enough to at least scale my day job back to part time work.  And hopefully sometime down the road, I can quit my day job altogether.  Now, wouldn’t that be nice?

[And for those wondering about health insurance if I quit my day job, Massachusetts is the place to be.  I can sign up for the state-subsidized insurance and they can’t turn me away due to pre-existing conditions.  Yet another reason to put up with the snow.]

1 Comment | Decisions, Educating, Expectations, Frustration, Job, Limitations, Rants, Raves, Symptoms, Unpredictable | Permalink
Posted by chronicrants

How sick is sick enough?

August 24, 2011

How do you define “sick”?

Ok, now how do you define it when it relates to taking time off work?  Are these two different things?

I woke up feeling lousy.  I thought about staying home, but dragged myself in to work anyway.  Why?  Well, if I thought that staying home would have helped me feel better beyond today, I probably would have done it.  This time, I don’t think that staying home and resting would have helped.  I tried it several days ago and it didn’t do the trick.  I would have felt better today, but not tomorrow or the next day.  Still, it was tempting to just call the boss, say I felt lousy, roll over, and sleep for another three or four hours.  Oh, that would have been nice.

How do you make these decisions?   It’s not easy if you work full time and have a limited number of sick days.  Besides, these sick days aren’t just for chronic illness stuff.  If I get a cold or sprain an ankle, I need to have some sick days left to use.  So what is “sick” enough to make it worth taking the day off?

Yet another reason why working full time with a CI sucks.  Anyone here disagree?

Leave a Comment » | Decisions, Expectations, Job, Rants, Support, Unpredictable | Permalink
Posted by chronicrants

You really want my illness to be predictable? Really?

August 13, 2011

Chronic illnesses are unpredictable.  That is actually one of the more difficult aspects of CIs.  If I knew when I’d feel good and when I’d feel lousy, life would be a whole lot simpler, but it just doesn’t work that way.  I know that.  I’m guessing you know that.  Somehow, other people seem to miss it.

I’m good at my job.  I get the work done well and ahead of schedule.  I also try to limit my sick time to when I really truly need it, since it would be easy to use it up too quickly.  Until recently, I had taken off a handful of days, but only one day here and there, usually 1-2 months apart.  No one cared.  Then I got a cold.  Of course, my immune system is naturally messed up, and I was on a med that made it worse, so I wasn’t recovering.  I missed 5 days of work and my boss was unhappy.  People had to cover for me and some work didn’t get done.  I don’t see how this is any different than when a coworker broke a leg and was out for 2 weeks, and others had to do her work.  I guess her boss was more understanding than mine.  And a broken leg could happen to anyone.  Apparently, I was asking for special treatment by using my sick days for being… what’s that word?  Oh yeah: SICK!

Things escalated and I ended up having a formal meeting with my boss and someone from HR.  Basically, my boss wanted my illness to be more predictable.  I was out sick at a very inconvenient time and this bothered her.  Um, excuse me, it bothered you?  You think I was actually happy about it?  What are people thinking?  She wants my absences to be more predictable.  Well guess what?  So do I!  I also want to know if I’ll have to cancel my date on Tuesday because I’m suddenly in pain, or if I’ll have to skip next week’s bbq because the heat is bothering me.  I would love to predict to how I’ll feel on any given day.  But chronic illnesses don’t work that way.  Hell, LIFE doesn’t work that way!  Deal with it.  Get over yourself.  Life is unpredictable.  And by the way, when I came back to work I worked hard and got everything done, so really, what’s your problem lady?

What makes me really sad is that I thought this was a case of an unusually unrealistic boss.  Then I read this:
http://workingwithchronicillness.com/2011/08/unpredictable-a-synonym-for-chronic-illness/

I would really love to educate these people.  For now, I’ll work on getting my own boss to understand how CIs, and life, really work.

1 Comment | Educating, Frustration, Insensitive, Job, Limitations, Rants, Symptoms, Unpredictable | Permalink
Posted by chronicrants

Being right is over-rated

July 28, 2011

I wish I was wrong yesterday, but I wasn’t.  Today sucked, and still sucks.  Waking up early for an unpleasant medical appointment is never fun.  Coming home late isn’t so great either.  Working at a boring, mindless job in the middle makes it all worse, especially when the boring, mindless job involves a lot of computer work, which only makes the pain worse.  The bright spot was that the pharmacy was really quick in filling the prescription that I don’t want to have to take.  And the boring, mindless job has good health insurance benefits, so I guess that’s a positive.  But no, I feel like crap, so I prefer to stay in a lousy mood for a bit longer.  Tomorrow I’ll be back to my happy, cheerful self.  Well, more or less.  Now, I’m just hoping to stay awake long enough to do some dishes and then go to bed at a reasonable hour.  Going to bed too early and throwing off the already-precarious sleep schedule will definitely not help things.  Ok, must stay awake, must stay awake, must stay awake……

Leave a Comment » | Job, Medication, Rants | Permalink
Posted by chronicrants

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