I realise this is a late and I’m well aware of my repeated promises to be more reliable with my posting, but I have no exciting yarn/example of destructive overthinking for you these evening.

I’ve been sick all week and haven’t done something even remotely cool enough to spin into juicy tale for you – for heaven’s sake, I just wrote a 600 word column about how uneventful my week has been on account of the phlegm factory I’ve been operating as this week.

So I don’t even have a yarn for you about not having a yarn – that’s one you’re going to have to wait to read after publication, if you can hold on that long.

All I have for you is a cautionary tale about actually staying home sick if you’re sick so you’re recovered in time to actually do fun stuff over your weekend instead of stagging from bed to couch for two days.

Instead of staying home in bed, I decided to be a fucking hero and continue showing up for work even though I spent the whole week with a facial expression like I was just about to sneeze. It would have looked as if I was giving the world the stink-eye while trying to stay awake after taking heavy sleeping pills.

On Thursday night I couldn’t even bring myself to pack a simple lunch for the following day. And I was so lethargic on Friday that I ended up buying a smoothie for lunch, sucking mushy sustenance out of a straw instead of going through all the extra effort of using cutlery to bring food to my face and chewing it for myself.

It wasn’t until I caught myself stuffing my snotty tissues in the empty cardboard cup that I realised I was waaaaay worse shape than I allowed myself to think I was.

I never pretend to be the most professional of professionals, but using a dirty old smoothie cup filled with snotty tissues to support my head crossed a line I didn’t even know I had.

Despite all my better judgment, a combination guilt, fear of being viewed as lazy, not wanting to veer from routine makes me try to stick it out through a flu when I need to acknowledge that this isn’t wise. Healthy Dannielle scoffs at this, knowing that trying to be a martyr is just annoying and puts everyone else at risk of catching whatever the big hero has. But Sick Dannielle is vulnerable to those guilty notions and too sickly to think straight.

So she tries to carry on. But it never ends well, and always makes her sicker longer than she needs to be.

Don’t do what I did, kids.

You probably don’t need to be explicitly told “don’t have a cardboard snot cylinder at your desk at 25 years old”, but it seems I do.

Heed my warning, and for heaven’s sake keep your feet covered.