How Much is TOO Much?
I've spent a lot of time thinking about "How much is TOO much?" and work.
In two days, I spent the better part of eight or nine hours doing nothing but SHOVELLING outside in the bitter cold. If you've paid attention, I'm older--I'm 51 now. I have a bad back and worse joints and I DID all the shovelling.
All in all, I came out of the first day of something like four and a half hours of shovelling still able to move, but sore. I cleared my massive drive out to the street three times FULLY, all by myself. There wasn't anyone to help me. None of the kids in the neighbourhood offer to shovel for fun or profit, and no one has things like snowploughs. I was on my own.
The SECOND day was worse, because there was a layer of ice in the snow as well as what the city snowplough threw back into my tunnel to freedom. It was also much more than the usual 4" limit I set to go out to shovel, since much beyond 4" deep is almost too hard to move--and this stuff was halfway up to my knees in many places (and I have long legs). I made it through the first two or three hours more or less okay, but by the last hours of it, I was in sheer agony. Every shovel full weighed from 10# to 20#. I thought I might pass out at one point, but I did it. When I came inside for the last time, I trembled for over an hour and I couldn't get warm; I struggled to breathe and felt as if I'd been mugged.
I've visually estimated that I moved almost the volume of the first floor of my house, shovelful by shovelful. Even the postman yesterday was shocked I had cleared away the snow on my drive "by hand", and he only saw that I did it for the FOURTH time. He didn't see the previous three times the day before. In some ways, it should count as a FOURTH AND FIFTH time, because to move all that yesterday I had to remove the top half first and then the bottom half. I could not have lifted the shovel if I'd tried to do it all at once.
I couldn't sleep all night because of the pain. Today, I can barely walk. I can't straighten my right leg and the only other option is to take either a Tylenol 3 or half a muscle relaxant--both of which would knock me out for hours.
I had no choice--I had to call in. I can't get DOWNSTAIRS, much less outside, into my car, drive out to work and then do all the up-and-down I have to do at work. I'm sure Clueless is spitting nails because I'm not there--in fact, I'm sure he was annoyed I didn't make it in for the past TWO days despite the snow accumulation. But now I don't have "an excuse" not to be there.
I'm 51, I've got asthma and arthritis. I was mostly shocked I made it through the first day without ill effects. Yesterday, as I was shovelling those last two sections of the drive and into the street when I hurt so badly and could barely breathe, I wondered "How much is TOO much?" It wasn't my fault it snowed, and I wasn't idle or playing around all day for those two days. All I did was shovel and come inside to recover. That was IT. I didn't read books or do anything but do hard labour and then come in to warm up and breathe normally again before I'd return to do it once more.
No, that's not true. I DID do stretching exercises in between sessions, because I was trying to AVOID the mess I'm in now. I did my best to nurture my bad joints and rubbed heavy-duty meds into the joints. I went to bed early and got up well before the buttcrack of dawn each day.
I can't see how I could have helped myself anymore than I have...and yet I can barely move. The only reason I'm typing is because I've found a twisted way to perch on the chair while trying to extend my right leg, although my hands and wrists also hurt like hell. When my heartbeat was pounding in my head and sweat was pouring down my body yesterday as I did those last two sessions outside, I wondered how close to a stroke or heart attack one had to push oneself toward before one's boss would consider you had "done enough". I thought about my old Helljob and how Gayla would NEVER have expected anyone to do all that. I thought about how I've wanted to become a full-time writer/artist and how if THAT were the case, I could have been INDOORS doing something valuable and possibly helpful to others rather than nearly killing myself to keep the passive-aggressive, whiney man I work for from bitching at me over the phone.
My sister Teresa and I were talking about this: How the ONE person who ends up picking up all the slack for everyone else who doesn't do their work ends up being ragged at by bad bosses and bitched at whenever they're not there. Both she and I are these people--and we've both had a bad rash of bad bosses.
Is Clueless bitching about Rachel's frequent absences, or does he notice that she tells everyone her boyfriend is taking a day off to go shopping--and then she "suddenly" has what she calls a "migraine" so that she can leave? (And believe me, her "headaches" are nothing like a migraine!) Does he bitch at the male employees who injure themselves doing extreme dirtbike tricks over the weekends so that they're torn up and sometimes too broken to work? Does he complain at the guy who takes off a day or more every week or two so that he can go ATV racing elsewhere? Or hey, did he say anything when his son (who doesn't do hardly anything anyway) showed up to work drunk off his arse and then left around noon?
NO. He bitches at ME. Because if I'm not there, nothing is getting done. And that's because I carry the biggest load of work AND I end up picking up the slack while these other people fuck around.
Yesterday, I wondered if I did fall down and end up in the hospital, would the man THEN pretend to any understanding, or would he just call the hospital and bitch that I wasn't there to do the work?
The reason I have asthma is because I worked for ten years at a place using volatile chemicals and unsafe ventillation. It has taken away a significant portion of my life and it turns out the xylene they used all the time is one of the most poisonous substances on earth. I was never permitted to wear a ventillator, since I worked in the office and it would "look bad" to the clients.
The reason I have CTS is because I worked for a hospital that didn't bother to fix its software for six months...and I had to type out a minimum of 500 checks a week on an electric typewriter for the whole hospital and its several thousand employees. At one point, I was told I would never be able to type again and that I should find 'some job' that didn't require it. The worse was being scared I would never draw or paint again. How much damage does one have to take? How much pain must one suffer?
How much is TOO much? If I weren't afraid I'd end up homeless, I'd never go back to Clueless and his nightmare. But just like the shovelling, I'm the only one taking care of myself. I don't seem to have a choice.
So if I end up unemployed for staying home after wracking my body up with two days of hard labour just trying to GET TO WORK...???
Nechtan
In two days, I spent the better part of eight or nine hours doing nothing but SHOVELLING outside in the bitter cold. If you've paid attention, I'm older--I'm 51 now. I have a bad back and worse joints and I DID all the shovelling.
All in all, I came out of the first day of something like four and a half hours of shovelling still able to move, but sore. I cleared my massive drive out to the street three times FULLY, all by myself. There wasn't anyone to help me. None of the kids in the neighbourhood offer to shovel for fun or profit, and no one has things like snowploughs. I was on my own.
The SECOND day was worse, because there was a layer of ice in the snow as well as what the city snowplough threw back into my tunnel to freedom. It was also much more than the usual 4" limit I set to go out to shovel, since much beyond 4" deep is almost too hard to move--and this stuff was halfway up to my knees in many places (and I have long legs). I made it through the first two or three hours more or less okay, but by the last hours of it, I was in sheer agony. Every shovel full weighed from 10# to 20#. I thought I might pass out at one point, but I did it. When I came inside for the last time, I trembled for over an hour and I couldn't get warm; I struggled to breathe and felt as if I'd been mugged.
I've visually estimated that I moved almost the volume of the first floor of my house, shovelful by shovelful. Even the postman yesterday was shocked I had cleared away the snow on my drive "by hand", and he only saw that I did it for the FOURTH time. He didn't see the previous three times the day before. In some ways, it should count as a FOURTH AND FIFTH time, because to move all that yesterday I had to remove the top half first and then the bottom half. I could not have lifted the shovel if I'd tried to do it all at once.
I couldn't sleep all night because of the pain. Today, I can barely walk. I can't straighten my right leg and the only other option is to take either a Tylenol 3 or half a muscle relaxant--both of which would knock me out for hours.
I had no choice--I had to call in. I can't get DOWNSTAIRS, much less outside, into my car, drive out to work and then do all the up-and-down I have to do at work. I'm sure Clueless is spitting nails because I'm not there--in fact, I'm sure he was annoyed I didn't make it in for the past TWO days despite the snow accumulation. But now I don't have "an excuse" not to be there.
I'm 51, I've got asthma and arthritis. I was mostly shocked I made it through the first day without ill effects. Yesterday, as I was shovelling those last two sections of the drive and into the street when I hurt so badly and could barely breathe, I wondered "How much is TOO much?" It wasn't my fault it snowed, and I wasn't idle or playing around all day for those two days. All I did was shovel and come inside to recover. That was IT. I didn't read books or do anything but do hard labour and then come in to warm up and breathe normally again before I'd return to do it once more.
No, that's not true. I DID do stretching exercises in between sessions, because I was trying to AVOID the mess I'm in now. I did my best to nurture my bad joints and rubbed heavy-duty meds into the joints. I went to bed early and got up well before the buttcrack of dawn each day.
I can't see how I could have helped myself anymore than I have...and yet I can barely move. The only reason I'm typing is because I've found a twisted way to perch on the chair while trying to extend my right leg, although my hands and wrists also hurt like hell. When my heartbeat was pounding in my head and sweat was pouring down my body yesterday as I did those last two sessions outside, I wondered how close to a stroke or heart attack one had to push oneself toward before one's boss would consider you had "done enough". I thought about my old Helljob and how Gayla would NEVER have expected anyone to do all that. I thought about how I've wanted to become a full-time writer/artist and how if THAT were the case, I could have been INDOORS doing something valuable and possibly helpful to others rather than nearly killing myself to keep the passive-aggressive, whiney man I work for from bitching at me over the phone.
My sister Teresa and I were talking about this: How the ONE person who ends up picking up all the slack for everyone else who doesn't do their work ends up being ragged at by bad bosses and bitched at whenever they're not there. Both she and I are these people--and we've both had a bad rash of bad bosses.
Is Clueless bitching about Rachel's frequent absences, or does he notice that she tells everyone her boyfriend is taking a day off to go shopping--and then she "suddenly" has what she calls a "migraine" so that she can leave? (And believe me, her "headaches" are nothing like a migraine!) Does he bitch at the male employees who injure themselves doing extreme dirtbike tricks over the weekends so that they're torn up and sometimes too broken to work? Does he complain at the guy who takes off a day or more every week or two so that he can go ATV racing elsewhere? Or hey, did he say anything when his son (who doesn't do hardly anything anyway) showed up to work drunk off his arse and then left around noon?
NO. He bitches at ME. Because if I'm not there, nothing is getting done. And that's because I carry the biggest load of work AND I end up picking up the slack while these other people fuck around.
Yesterday, I wondered if I did fall down and end up in the hospital, would the man THEN pretend to any understanding, or would he just call the hospital and bitch that I wasn't there to do the work?
The reason I have asthma is because I worked for ten years at a place using volatile chemicals and unsafe ventillation. It has taken away a significant portion of my life and it turns out the xylene they used all the time is one of the most poisonous substances on earth. I was never permitted to wear a ventillator, since I worked in the office and it would "look bad" to the clients.
The reason I have CTS is because I worked for a hospital that didn't bother to fix its software for six months...and I had to type out a minimum of 500 checks a week on an electric typewriter for the whole hospital and its several thousand employees. At one point, I was told I would never be able to type again and that I should find 'some job' that didn't require it. The worse was being scared I would never draw or paint again. How much damage does one have to take? How much pain must one suffer?
How much is TOO much? If I weren't afraid I'd end up homeless, I'd never go back to Clueless and his nightmare. But just like the shovelling, I'm the only one taking care of myself. I don't seem to have a choice.
So if I end up unemployed for staying home after wracking my body up with two days of hard labour just trying to GET TO WORK...???
Nechtan