A while ago, the internet was abuzz over a story about a woman who took some sick days off and cited that they were to “focus on my mental health,” which was then personally responded to by the CEO of her company, applauding her for doing such. Bringing the all-important “awareness” to the issue, and then people all over the internet collectively went “awww” over it, because mental health is a legitimate issue in today’s world.
Personally, I didn’t buy it. My knee-jerk reaction was that the woman was feeling burned out and didn’t want to go to work, and called in sick, which is a common practice all around the world pretty much. I’m more impressed that she was so honest in the sense that she didn’t make up some phony excuse, phantom sickness, cite a fake death in the family or use food poisoning as reason to take two days off.
But mental health? Yeah no, I don’t buy it. I don’t think the mental word trigger should be so quick to be pulled when people are getting burned out by their jobs, or are just really exhausted and don’t want to face their work for a day or two. And if they have the sick time, why not use it?
The reason I sat down to write about this is that on this particular day, I had what these sheep would have constituted as a bad mental health day. I woke up unpleasantly due to a solicitor coming to my door at an AM hour, with my dogs barking up a storm while I’m trying to tell someone to buzz off in the most polite manner as I can. And then in one particular errand I agreed to go on, I got annihilated by traffic going to and from my destination, leading me to be extremely pissed off. And due to the wasted time sitting in traffic, I ended up being denied the visit to the barbecue restaurant I made my condition for going on this little errand.
By the time I got home, my mood was shot, and there was no coming back from it. Everything else throughout the day just drew ire and agitation, and I had the shortest fuse with absolutely everything. The world felt overpopulated, and I just wanted to be alone and doing things that only I wanted to do, and it was feeling like such was impossible because I didn’t feel like anyone in the world actually thought about or had any consideration for me, except for me. I mean, it really shouldn’t be any different from that, but god damn was I beginning to feel like I was the most inconsequential entity on the planet whose wants were all expendable compared to others.
But basically, this is what I would have called a bad mental health day. Had it been a work day, would I have taken it off? Fuck no. Going to work is actually something good for my bad mental health days, because I can channel all my concentration on work, and take my mind off of the things that are bogging down my mental health.
However, the things that help? Sitting down and watching some baseball. Trying to figure out how to fix things. Little tiny errands, and shit like watching movies helped.
The woman who took off work citing those mental health days? Sure, I know her CEO and the internet applauded it and all, but there’s no convincing me that her days off were spent in pajamas watching Netflix and eating garbage, which seems like a far cry from focusing on anything other than mindless shit, which seems kind of counterproductive to anything remotely mental.
The bottom line is that this is a shit post, because my mind is full of shit today, which has been lousy, but after a few hours of doing some mindless shit to decompress and take my mind off of how much I hated the world today, the thought to write about writing about shitty days kind of came to fruition and here we stand.
As for my focusing on my mental health, the rest of the evening will likely be spent burning through the remaining stamina I have in Fire Emblem Heroes, and then going to bed and reading a book until I fall asleep, where I genuinely hope tomorrow is a better day, and I can salvage at least one good day of the weekend that I had looked so forward to.
