Fever Dreams Of Work-Life Balance

I'm writing this with a fuzzy head and a low-grade fever, which feels appropriate given the topic.

I missed Friday's post because I wasn't feeling well. Spent the weekend sick while still taking care of three kids who have absolutely no interest in whether Dad is under the weather. Now it's Monday, and I'm logging on to work despite still not being at 100%. Not because anyone's making me. Because what else am I going to do, sit around and scroll my phone for another hour?

That's actually what tipped me into working today. I caught myself brain-rotting on my phone this morning, and something clicked: this is not productive. If I'm going to be awake and semi-functional, I might as well try to get something done.

From Wastewater to Fuzzy Code

Years ago, I worked as an operator at the city wastewater plant. Shift work. If you called out sick, there was no one to cover. The machines still needed monitoring. Someone had to make sure nothing was exploding or wastewater wasn't dumping into the river.

So I'd show up with pretty severe symptoms, medicate with DayQuil, rest when I could, drink fluids, and keep an eye on things. Maybe lighter duty than normal, but present. And people thanked you for it. "Thank you for doing that, because otherwise we'd be in trouble."

I didn't resent it. Other people did it too. That's just what you did back then.

Here's the irony: that job was physically harder to do while sick. Standing, walking, checking gauges, responding to alarms. But the stakes of a mistake were immediate and visible. Wastewater in the river. Alarms going off. You'd know right away if you'd messed up.

Now I work in a field where clear thinking matters more than physical presence. The stakes of a "brain fog" mistake in technical work can actually be higher and more permanent. A bad decision in code doesn't set off an alarm. It just ships. You might not discover the damage for weeks or months. And by then, good luck tracing it back to the day you were running a fever and thought you were "fine enough" to work.

That's the new frontier. Physical presence used to be the question. Can you show up? Can you stand for eight hours? Now cognitive clarity is the question. And it's a much harder one to answer honestly.

The Invisible Limbo

Here's the strange dichotomy of modern work: as people have gotten more sensitive about being sick in person, they've gotten less sensitive about being sick when you're working remotely.

I've had times with a 101, 102 fever, really struggling to focus, and there's still this quiet expectation. Not like anyone's forcing me to work, but just: "Hey, can you answer an email? Answer some questions? Maybe fix a little thing here and there?"

Nobody would want you in the office with a high fever. But somehow, if you're at home, the rules change. Your sickness becomes invisible, so it stops counting.

This creates a limbo that didn't exist before. "Staying home" used to mean "stopping work." Now staying home just means working from a different location. The sick employee is trapped: neither resting nor fully performing. You're expected to be available because you're technically "home," but you're operating at diminished capacity because you're actually sick.

Today's a mild version of that. I don't have anything requiring me to be in person. I didn't even check my calendar, honestly. But I'm still going to work because the alternative is falling behind, and work doesn't just sit there and wait for you.

The Hill of Catch-Up

Things pile up. That's just reality. So every sick day becomes a calculation: do I not work at all and create a mountain of catch-up for future-me, or do I work a little bit and only have a small hill waiting?

The falling behind is the main concern. It's not anxiety when it's true.

The last time I took actual sick days, two of them, was maybe two years ago. I had a 103 fever and was delirious. I don't remember those days at all. When I finally came back to consciousness, work had piled up significantly. It was fine, a little stressful, but there was nothing I could do about it.

That's the bargain we've made with remote work. The flexibility to work from anywhere comes with the expectation that you're always somewhere. The Hill of Catch-Up is always waiting. And the sicker you are, the steeper it gets.

The New Social Contract

The norms around working while sick have shifted dramatically since COVID, and they haven't fully settled yet. There's still a broad spectrum of how people handle this stuff.

What matters more than debating why people feel the way they do is understanding how it affects the modern social contract of work.

We now live in a world of specific frictions. If you're sick and go to the office, you're inconsiderate. If you're sick and stay home, you're expected to be online. If you're sick and actually rest, work piles up. If you work through it, you might make mistakes you won't catch until later.

I was doing a Bible study a while back, a ten-week thing where missing one session meant missing ten percent of the course. I'd had a fever earlier, but it broke. I wasn't coughing, didn't feel bad at all. The only remaining symptom was laryngitis: my voice was crackly and soft.

I made the judgment call to go. And there was tension. "Kenn, are you sick? Did you have a fever? Maybe you shouldn't be here."

Nobody got sick from my attendance. I felt fine. But I wondered afterward if I'd made a mistake. Not medically. Socially. The calculus has changed, and navigating it requires constant recalibration.

My personal instincts on how sick you can be while still working haven't really changed. But my sensitivity to other people has.

Kids Have No Chill

My kids factor into sick days in a predictable way: they don't care.

It doesn't matter if I'm not feeling well. They're still expecting full Dad mode. Working, not working, fever or no fever. They're not interested in whether Dad is sick. I have to be really, visibly ill for them to even register that something's off and adjust their behavior accordingly.

When I finally came back to consciousness after those two delirious sick days, my kids were annoyed because they'd missed a week of visitation with me. They take visitation time seriously. Which is sweet, in its way. But it also means there's no cavalry coming when I'm down.

The Fuzzy-Headed Calculation

The hardest part about being sick while parenting and working isn't the guilt about not resting. It's the uncertainty about my own cognition.

When I'm fuzzy-headed, I don't know if my judgment is compromised or if I'm just thinking slow. Those are different problems. One means I should step back from decisions. The other just means things take longer.

At the wastewater plant, impaired judgment meant an alarm would eventually go off. In technical work, impaired judgment means you ship something broken and don't find out until it's too late to matter.

So far, I've never made a work decision while sick that I later realized the fever had affected. But how would I know for sure? That's the thing about impaired judgment: you're not always the best judge of whether you're impaired.

Three Posts a Week

I'm trying to do three blog posts a week. It's a goal I set to be consistent, to help build a brand for my company and for myself. When I missed Friday because I was sick, I felt genuinely bad about it. I thought about going back Saturday to post something, but I wasn't feeling great, and the kids kept running me ragged. Chauffeuring my daughter to her activities, making food, all the normal stuff that doesn't pause for Dad's immune system.

It is what it is. That phrase does a lot of work. It's acceptance and resignation wrapped together.

The Trap

Here's what I keep coming back to: remote work was supposed to give us flexibility. And it has. But it also eliminated the one clear boundary that used to exist between sick and working.

When you had to physically show up, being too sick to show up meant you didn't work. Simple. Now there's no threshold. You're always technically able to work. You're just choosing not to. And that choice comes with a cost.

The Hill of Catch-Up is always growing. The expectation of availability never stops. The limbo of being sick-but-online has no clear exit.

We traded the badge of honor for showing up sick to the office for something worse: the invisible expectation that you'll always be on, regardless of how you feel, because no one can see that you're not okay.

The fever dream of work-life balance is the idea that there's some optimal state where everything is in equilibrium. Where being sick means you rest and being well means you work and the boundaries are clear.

That's not how it works. Not anymore. You just do what you can at diminished capacity and hope the mistakes you're making aren't the permanent kind.