I’m sick, but I write. Is that self-exploitation or freedom?

When I still had a 9 to 5 job, I stayed at home when I was sick. Today I don’t have a boss anymore. I could go to bed and sleep when I am sick. But I don’t. Why? Read about it in this article.

Photo by Rex Pickar on Unsplash

Today I’m not doing well at all. My throat is scratching, my nose is clogged, and my head feels as if it has been poured with concrete.

I have a cold. I have little energy and could use sleep now. But I sit here and write another story.

Last week, my best-paid story earned me $4.15. So if I’m lucky, I could make a little more than four dollars on the article I’m writing now.

So why am I doing this to myself? Nobody forces me to work today. The money can’t really be the reason.

Of course, I hope that at some point, I will earn a lot of money writing articles, but it’s not that far yet. If I didn’t write an essay today, it would have almost no measurable impact on my income this month.

Nevertheless, my decision also has to do with money. Not with the money that this one article will bring me, but with the money that I will earn in a few months.

Don’t break the chain

I am downright obsessed with the subject of continuity. The knowledge that our fate is the sum of many small decisions makes me pay a lot of attention to little things in everyday life.

A cigarette won’t kill us; a piece of cake won’t make us fat. But thousands of cigarettes over decades will kill us, and hundreds of pieces of cake will make us fat over the years and perhaps give us diabetes.

That’s why I don’t smoke tobacco anymore and only eat cake on weekends.

What does that have to do with my decision to write even though I am sick?

Well, I don’t see today and my decision today as isolated events, but try to see things in a bigger context.

If I now give in to my desire to lie down instead of working, a learning process takes place in my brain. I signal to my mind that it is okay to be influenced by my sensitivities.