Why Is It So Hard to Rest When I’m Sick?

Updated September 1, 2024 01:31PM

I finally went to the doctor last week. It was day 22 of having symptoms of something, a cough, probably a sinus infection, maybe walking pneumonia, something stubborn that just refused to go away despite all my attempts to just ignore it and keep going.

I have very few memories of my parents staying home from work because they were sick. Recovering from a couple surgeries, yes, maybe the occasional cold that was a real knockout, but rarely. I remember in 1997 when Michael Jordan battled the flu (or food poisoning, depending who you ask) to score 38 points against the Utah Jazz in Game 5 of the NBA Finals, and I was probably less impressed than I should have been, since, really, it was just a guy going to work when he was sick.

After several decades and one global pandemic, I of course know that it’s not appropriate to try to “power through” when you’re sick, since it makes illnesses last longer, makes you miserable at work, and helps viruses spread. But it’s American. Plus, I rationalize working while I’m sick because I don’t even have to go anywhere—I can work on my laptop on the couch!

In my regular healthy life, I never sit on the couch unless I’m trying to get our toddler to read a book with me, or the occasional night once a week or so when Hilary and I watch one episode of a show. She’d usually rather write, or read, or garden, and I always have a 10-foot-long to-do-list:

That’s how you get shit done, I tell myself. I am not a LinkedInfluencer telling you how to optimize your life down to the minute—I just prefer doing things to relaxing. Relaxing, being, as far as I understand it, not doing things (?).

I also have an overdeveloped sector of my brain, which, on a cranial CT scan, would look like this:

I’ve had illnesses like this before: In 2010, while bicycling across the United States, I battled a cold/flu/something for 11 days, taking DayQuil during the day and NyQuil at night, while pedaling about 60 miles every day. In 2016, I caught a cold during a book tour and made it last six weeks, turning it into a sinus infection by the end. In 2018, I managed to get sick the day before a Run The Alps group trip from Chamonix to Zermatt over eight days and spent the first half of the trip recovering.

So many things I like to do—running mountain ultramarathons, climbing mountains, long hikes and bike rides—require learning how to push through pain, fatigue, and common sense. So I’m pretty used to the line of thinking that discomfort is actually just a side effect of meaningful experiences. Except when it’s not.

After coughing for three weeks straight, through two negative Covid tests, two doctor’s appointments, another negative Covid test and negative flu test, and one chest X-ray, I finally resigned myself to: resting.

To actually rest, I have to force myself to watch movies. Committing to a movie puts me in a flow state, in which I cannot check email, read the news, look at social media, or any of the other things that might give me anxiety.

Movies, nowadays, includes YouTube, and it wasn’t long into my convalescence until the algorithm fed me a Beau Miles video titled “I’m sick,” during which Beau coughs his way through an entire year of nonstop doing stuff/making videos/trail running, with not one but two (!) pneumonia diagnoses.

In the first year of sending our little guy to group childcare, I’ve had something like seven or eight colds, two bouts of norovirus (or something similar), and one round of hand, foot, and mouth disease. Throughout that year, I said to my friend Mike (also dad to a toddler) that “feeling 80 percent is the new 100 percent,” which was me trying to be optimistic.

So in Beau’s “I’m Sick” video, when he said, “The thing is, I was like 70 percent—and 70 percent is OK in my book,” I of course saw myself.

Also: “I’m not the kind of bloke that likes baths. I think baths take way too long.”

Also see: Person who just keeps going, coughing through everything, refusing to stop because …

Americans (myself included) suck at taking vacation, too. And many of us will take a vacation, but suck at actually being present on said vacation, checking email, maybe taking a work meeting or two while we’re gone, you know, somehow keeping a running mental tally of the number of unread messages in our inbox(es) and arriving at the end of our vacation having not really ever disconnected at all.

I noticed this thing a few years ago when leaving on a trip where I would have zero service for several days: I got ahead of everything as much as I could, frantically finishing up work throughout the final days before I left, answering every unread message so I’d have Inbox 0. Even on the drive to the trailhead where my phone would finally be useless, I refreshed a few times, just to make sure I’d covered everything. Finally, my cell phone bars disappeared completely, and I shut off my phone, with no choice but to be present, to take a break.

After the trip, I avoided turning my phone back on for hours, the pre-trip urgency and anxiety having evaporated somewhere out there. When I finally did turn on my phone, I scrolled through the six days of email I’d missed, scanned the text messages that had come in while I was offline, and to my great relief and mild dismay, everyone had gotten along just fine without my input.

Which is exactly what happened when I got sick, and finally, begrudgingly submitted to the idea of actually resting: The world, quite shockingly, survived without me for a few days.