Work is a Chronic Illness
My time as a sick spoonie closely resembled my experience as a full-time worker.
I’ve been in the recording studio all week, narrating the audiobook for my forthcoming release, Unlearning Shame. And that’s meant I’ve been keeping dramatically different hours from the one my work-from-home, online-professor-slash-writer self has gotten used to.
Instead of rolling out of bed around 9 or 9:30 am to lay out my yoga mat and languidly select a work-out video and a podcast to listen to while I complete it, I’ve been bolting upright in bed to the sound of my alarm at 7am, and dashing to complete my mourning routine. I’ve been throwing on clothing in a chaotic flash, gulping down water to relubricate my pipes before the recording session, and running to the train station to make it to the studio on time, often with an empty belly and bleary red streaks in my eyes.
Instead of carefully plodding my way through my email inbox and my writing tasks, taking the occasional pause for a meeting, my ass has been in the chair from 10am until 5pm without much of a break, my eyes fixed to the iPad with my new book loaded onto it, my posture as perfect as I can make it to allow air to flow from my diaphragm and up to my throat. I have to project, with perfect pronunciation and artful modulation of voice, really feeling…
