I woke up at 5:45am today. My brain grabbed ahold of some idea about work and I couldn’t go back to sleep. I’ve had a bowl of oatmeal, have read my morning reflections and written a gratitude list, and am starting my second cup of coffee.
Yesterday, my son Jackson had the startings of a cold. Marisa and I looked at our calendars to see who would be impacted least by staying home from work and giving Jack a day away from daycare. My schedule was less-full than my wife’s so I stayed home with him.
I canceled one meeting and called work and bothered several people to set up a conference call number so that I could remotely join a meeting that was happening. I changed my outbound voicemail and set the out-of-office notification on my email. I sent an email to my two bosses and my colleagues and team members. It was 30 minutes of work, just to not go to work.
But the big bonus was that I wasn’t panicking and paranoid.
Jackson is almost four years old now, so we’ve had plenty of days to keep him home sick. He daycare has a policy of “24 hours clear” so that means even after he gets over his tummy trouble or whatever, we still need to keep him home.
My every time I have had to miss work because of him being ill, it has been mentally exhausting for me because I’ve had to go through a whole worry about “getting fired”. My brain is not my friend is the expression in 12-step work. My brain will tell me that even though I have close to two months of accrued sick days sitting on the books, “You’re gonna get fired!” if I, heaven-forbid, take one of those days to stay home with my son when he’s ill.
<<7:12am>> Well, my little monster woke up and we’ve had vitamins and a PB&J (not the best breakfast of all time…) and now we’re heading out the door. Daddy may just be able to make it to an 8am exercise class for 30 minutes before going into work. That is, if I haven’t been fired. 🙂
Dylan Stafford 
thanks for reading