A Valediction: of Malaise Productivity
We Need To Stop Being Obnoxiously Bad at Being Sick
I mean it. Iâm terrible at it, and if youâre reading this my guess is you are too. Itâs like weâre all part of this awful club we invented in our heads, yet none of us actually want to be a member. But we are, arenât we? Weâre card-carrying disciples of its farcical mission, of malaise productivity: to walk the tight rope of being sick whilst still remaining productive in any way we can.
I canât be bothered to have another conversation about our unhealthy relationship with productivity where our value is tied up and sinks to the bottom of a to-do-list cesspit where Instagram announcements trump valued mental health and wellbeing. As @dudettewithsign eloquently points out: maybe we should start therapy, not a podcast. Perhaps the former should be a prerequisite for a side hustle if youâre a Type A, work-orientated junkie like me. Weâre all too familiar with the cause of malaise productivity: capitalist integration of oneâs value equalling productivity; the misrepresentation of overnight success; technology advances enabling one to send an email from oneâs child bedroom; good old-fashioned catholic guilt. The list goes on, yet knowing and integrating these causes isnât helping.
credit: @duddettewithasign
Instead I want to relish my stinking anxiety and ignore the scratching at my arms to check emails when my body is in pain, telling me it needs rest. Like a pig in shit I want to roam through my crazed angst which encases me like aspic when Iâm sick, instead of continuing to try and work. Malaise productivity tis a madness, but also quite possibly a lost opportunity.
Last week I had a horrible flu virus thatâs still lingering now, it was escorted by a heavy period and then later chaperoned by the delights of a water infection. I know, you should have seen me: it was ugly. Mark described my complexion as a shade of green which seemed to be accompanied by an, as yet, unnamed facial rash. I looked how I felt: nasty. I cancelled all my meetings and then oscillated between sitting at my desk typing away emails in a nightie and crying on the sofa because Mark wasnât âtaking how ill I am seriously.â I put an out of office on and yet replied instantly to every email I was sent. I took my laptop to bed with me â a big red burnout flag and very bad behaviour. I took client calls, edited a proposal and when I felt too weak to do that I did my accounts because that didnât demand my âcreative brainâ and therefore would be hugely manageable as I haemorrhaged blood, coughed my guts up and yelped whenever I needed to pee. I managed my dizziness by taking occasional breaks where Iâd watch an episode of some abhorrent reality TV show which was ruined anyway by my intermittent tab changover so I could refresh emails. I did feel bad for Khloe though, and then pondered whether I should die my hair blonde again. My sisterâs feelings on the matter were clear: âNo, donât do that. Calm down. You havenât let yourself go, youâre just sickâ.
Now I really do want to give myself some credit where credit is due here. I once had a virus that was so obsessed with me it stayed for an entire month, and when it finally went away for a week, the psychopath came back and taunted me for another fortnight. I pretty much worked through the entire thing and wondered why I found myself sat at the bottom of my bed a month later begging a GP for antibiotics over the phone. (Antibiotics donât work on viral infections). âIâm going to lose my job if I donât get better,â I said, which wasnât true because Iâd gone to the office almost every day. She insisted the only thing that would lead to my recovery was rest and â this next verbal prescription she repeated â âdrink lots of fluidsâ. I still find myself wondering sometimes: had I taken a solid week off and not checked work emails, would the virus have cleared up straight away?
Credit is due because I did cancel all my meetings last week, which is not something the old me would not have done. And I didnât leave the house for six days which is growth (also post-Covid itâs apparently considered a selfish act to prioritise your desire to get things done over other peopleâs health). But I did mysteriously keep finding myself back at my desk which was awash with paracetamol, snotty tissues and, you guessed it: âlots of fluidsâ. I also found myself migrating work-related issues I felt too tired to deal with over to WhatsApp and converting calls Iâd said I wasnât well enough to take into voicenotes.
No one around me encouraged this or demanded it, no one made me feel guilty or induced this wavering angst whereby I was working â not working â working â not working⊠and on and on it went until I wasnât sure if I was representing Khloe Kardashianâs memoir or acquiescing under a feather duvet with a hot water, lemon and ginger. There was anxiety about not getting better for weeks if I didnât rest and there was anxiety about not working and ending up client-less, broke and desolate. This seems irrational because it is irrational, but with mortgage rates rocketing and a rental crisis on our hands, our sense of stability and home is in flux â the one basic human need everyone deserves assurance of is being taken away. Anyway, these contrasting anxieties battled it out but seemed stuck in a perpetual tie-break that only added to my dizziness.
Itâs important to be clear: Iâm not referring to long-term or chronic illness, which Iâve also experienced. This is directed at those more fleeting ailments we think we can âpush throughâ. And donât mistake this as a plea for sympathy, rather a plea for other members to come forward and reconsider their approach. Maybe itâs time to say goodbye to our fabricated worst-case scenarios, which are things like *drum roll please* our work load is shunted by a few weeks (oh no!), our clients think â even just for a moment â âwhat a lazy bitchâ, or we get sacked. These scenarios are highly unlikely when taking just two weeks sick leave. Yet for some reason, we canât do it, can we? We crawl through the chest infection on hands and knees, grasping desperately at some shred of âIâm still availableâ; âI havenât gone anywhereâ. Hybrid working holds our hand whilst stabbing us in the back: calling in sick used to mean a physical absence ensuring we left our responsibilities the hell alone instead of having unprecedented access to our virtual in-trays. Who here hasnât zoomed with the camera off from their sick bed? Raise your hand. Why is that being normalised?
I chatted to a literary agent on the phone recently who told me her back pain had been so bad the previous week sheâd âwanted to dieâ.
âDid you continue working?â I asked, curiously.
âYeah, I didnât like take a week off or anything. Although I think that is a thing people do.â
I spoke to another woman with the flu who made the humorous confession that she was admittedly too ill to walk her child to nursery and yet found herself in the kitchen making âunnecessary muffinsâ said child would never eat. When I casually mentioned to another friend I was getting mercilessly attacked by mother nature and an AWOL immune system from below the waist, she dropped in: âoh they think Iâve got shinglesâ. She said sheâd had it before and would âkeep an eye on itâ. I never got round to asking who they were. Iâm assuming a medical professional, or a conscientious loved one. Identifying the cause clearly isnât the salve because here we still are: Flu Melon, Shingles Melon, Bad-Back Melon and Everything-Below-the-Waist Melon, still partaking in this bleak painting of malaise productivity, a triptych of toxicity, cruelty and inefficiency.
I think the problem is that weâve lost respect and appreciation for being sick. Now hear me out! There are things to be discovered from illness, new parts of ourselves to be acquainted with in our untrammelled imagination, new realms in our heart and mind when our perspective is shifted, and perhaps our inner demons can be more easily purged. When I had Covid last summer, it brought up so much shadow work, as if all my wounding and deepest insecurities were pushed to the surface. I found myself accusing Mark of plotting to have an affair (I had a very high fever). He hadnât left the house in days, the only thing that boy was plotting was my next meal and how to coerce me into the tub. Itâs odd but the experience sort of expelled something between us, gave way to a fresh layer of intimacy.
In Virginia Woolfâs âOn Being Illâ where she writes about the cultural taboos of illness, she explores sickness as a spiritual awakening, some bridge to undiscovered paths of the soul.
âConsider how common illness is, how tremendous the spiritual change that it brings, how astonishing, when the lights of health go down, the undiscovered countries that are then disclosed, what wastes and deserts of the soul a slight attack of influenza brings to view, what precipices and lawns sprinkled with bright flowers a little rise of temperature reveals, what ancient and obdurate oaks are uprooted in us by the act of sicknessâŠit becomes strange indeed that illness has not taken its place with love and battle and jealousy among the prime themes of literature.â
I want to expunge malaise productivity. I want to languish in the bright flowers of my menstrual-induced temperature and remember what it feels like to while away under a duvet on the sofa in front of Disney films. I want to be a little slummock in unwashed sheets and spend time with a pain so natural itâs more real than any âIâm sorry to chase you butâŠâ I want my heart rate to slow down so that it rivals that of a hibernating tortoise, slowly slowly into relaxation as a state of jouissance. I want to stagnate; be so still I can hear the coalition of white blood cells heading forth for battle. I want to fall down and into my malaise, relish it, like that pig in shit.
Thereâs a good chance Iâm rebranding sickness as productivity and selling it back to myself. Sounds likely, doesnât it? But what is helpful is just talking about it with one another. A fellow melon said to me: âI want to absolve myself of it, itâs such a waste of feeling, so reductive.â Hearing those words made me settle into myself like the ginger steeping in my mug of fluids and think: itâs okay. Itâs okay to stop, to close the laptop and say no when your body is in pain. But itâs a hell of a lot easier when we feel weâre all doing it together. Letâs value the âwastes and deserts of the soulâ where true, unrelenting rest feels so god damn good that nothing can compete or mend our bodies so miraculously.
I failed this time, naturally otherwise this piece would be nothing short or an earnest brag or a lecture no one asked for. I failed. But next time I am going to do better.
Join me in saying farewell to malaise productivity.
Adieu. Â Â
A Valediction: of Malaise Productivity
I always enjoy reading your posts :)
If I remember correctly it wasn't all that long ago you went on a retreat and purged a whole bunch of stuff from the system of mind, body and soul? My experience with these sort of things is, just like Virginia Woolf describes, that sickness is very liberating but the flipside of this is that liberation also brings to light a great deal of sickness. These unpopped, festering bubbles of overstepped boundaries that we ignore and the hundred other things we accept along the way are given the chance to breathe when we exercise these liberation skills (retreats, yoga, meditation, whatever it is that we do). But this is it: it brings this stuff to LIGHT! Once its there it comes up on the surface, bubbles and burns and fucks us up, then goes away and we are left only with the memory. It's up to us not to hold on to the memory as the thing itself, it's exactly that which brings the sicknesses back into the body. Good on you for being sick and doing less than you would have done in the past, good on you for seeing there's still room for improvement, and good on you for putting it out there for other people to see. Sickness shows us our fears and our shortcomings but there's nothing for us to do in the sickness but to be right the fuck in there - and drink plenty of fluids, of course. When we're healthy we run toward our fears and disempower them. Keep up the good fight and I look forward to your next post :)
Nick
I spent the morning bemoaning the fact that I am so disappointed with myself for succumbing to illness before coming across your article! Iâm resentful of the fact that my body is letting me down. I feel defeated and weak! What is it about our brain that just wonât admit defeat! Great read. I have now surrendered to the fact that I too need to slow down to recover from the dreaded November lurghy. Itâs the only time I ever seem to get sick. I have reframed it since reading your piece and am now of the mindset that the reason I get unwell in November, is to kick start my immune system enough to keep me healthy and safe throughout the rest of the gruesome winter months! Now I have succumbed and am going to chill.... after I sweep the kitchen floor!đ€Ș