Sickness and Freelancing

Back in my teaching days, I would get 1-2 bad colds a year courtesy of my students. To their credit, high schoolers are a bit cleaner than their middle and elementary school brethren. However, when sickness hit, I downed some Sudafed and soldiered on. The running joke among us teachers was that whenever we got sick, we told one another that, “Yeah, I took some Sudafed, but it’s really cutting into my meth production.” Oh Walter White…

Anyway, I’m musing on sickness as I’ve caught a cold this week. Students weren’t to blame, but a gaggle of small children at my cousin’s baby’s 1st birthday party last weekend. Despite Purell-ing every five minutes, a few wayward germs got into my system.

As we all know, having a cold stinks, and it can be hard sometimes to determine if/when it’s bad enough that we should take the day off. As a freelancer, this decision is especially difficult. After all, I can sleep as late as I want to and I don’t have to drain my energy commuting. With those distractions out of the way, should a freelancer take a whole day off for being sick?

The answer is easy: of course.

It can be a hard decision. Freelancers have no sick days, no real ones anyway, and passing on work means an impact on the bottom line. But sometimes health and recovery is more important than income.

So besides writing this post, I’m takin the day off. Happy Friday.