Sick leave, meetings and productivity

I took today off work. Yesterday at work I wasn't very productive. It felt like I had a headache, except without much actual pain. I wondered if that was what people mean by a pressure headache, but some brief searching online suggests otherwise. I did get some useful things done, though.

I try not to take sick leave. My boss is quite clear, though: it is best if people are in the office at full strength, and if one is sick then one should rest properly at home and get better quickly, rather than attempting some walking-wounded half-efficiency effort.

At the start of my Christmas break, I had a rather bad cold. For the first week of it I felt rotten indeed. Of course, that was pre-booked vacation time, not sick leave. After getting back to work I felt happy with how quickly I had my head back in my job. Yesterday afternoon, though, I was less sure what to do next. It may have been the headache, or it may have been that I had moved on to a trickier task.

I swim before work. I should post a bit more about that later. Yesterday's swimming went quite well so I was looking forward to today's. And, yesterday afternoon I figured out more about, or talked myself into, what to at least try doing next at work, so I was looking forward to a clear day of getting on with that. So, it was annoying last night to be kept up by earache. Earaches probably require avoiding swimming, and I was too distracted and tired to attempt a full workday, even if it promised to be one of satisfying productivity. I don't know if one can somehow catch earache from another person, but staying at home prevents that too.

I've now caught up on sleep and my earache, while it comes and goes, has now more gone than come, so I hope it stays like that and I can get back to swimming and work tomorrow. I think head position matters: last night I learned not to sleep with the sore ear downward which makes me wonder if it's related to congestion. After all, neither of my ears feel quite right. Now I wonder if yesterday's nearly headache, and my earache overnight, are connected. So long as they stay away that's the main thing.

Today was promising to be a good day indeed at work. The set of people who aren't in the office today caused us to decide to skip our Tuesday afternoon team meeting. Meetings break up my day and distract me, especially the Tuesday one because I am often the one taking the minutes so I need to get ready for that. Mondays are bothersome too, I don't know if it's because matters have piled up over the weekend or what, but on most weeks in this job it is Wednesday onward when I make the most progress on my larger tasks. Though, these days, as well as our usual 0930 meeting, I'm pulled into a daily 1400 meeting which also breaks up my work time. It doesn't help that, for a while before the meeting, I am conscious that it is coming, thinking, Do I want to try to get into this next step now, when I know I'll be interrupted?

Update: I picked up some decongestant from Asda. I hope that helps me to sleep better tonight.

Swimming

My weekday routine has me swim in Perth before work in Dundee. I try to be in the pool before 0645 and start with front crawl. I allow myself to mix in some backstroke after 0700 and breaststroke after 0720. I finish shortly after 0725. The timing works out for giving Benjamin a lift to his bus stop and snagging one of the last parking spaces beside the life sciences research complex.

Swimming is pretty much about the only exercise I get and I definitely do need some form of aerobic exercise in my life. I like swimming partly because it works various muscles and is low-impact but mostly because it keeps me cool. If I try to work out then I feel uncomfortably hot very quickly, I don't know why. With the water running over me all the time I can keep exercising without overheating. I swim at a gym and spa with a single pool serving for both; the water isn't as cool as lap swimming pools, certainly not outdoor ponds, but it's still just about cool enough to be tolerable while I swim.

Sometimes swimming feels like hard work and the best times are when I can swim faster and it doesn't feel like hard work. Yesterday morning had some lengths like that which is why I was annoyed to skip swimming today with my earache as I hope that if I work enough then it usually won't feel like work. I often swim harder when I am sharing the lane, to try to maintain enough speed difference from others that we mostly remain comfortably separate. The lane is wide enough for swimmers in opposite directions to pass, so we swap side at each end. If, as is usual, I am sharing the lane, I stick to just front crawl, so as to be narrow and see what's going on. Sometimes there are even four or five of us in the lane.

I don't want to suggest that I am a great swimmer. At our small gym, I am probably averagely fast among those who do more than a slow, gentle breaststroke. Some men and women I often see there are clearly consistently rather faster than I. I don't even bother with wearing goggles and keeping my head fully in the water and suchlike, and I often take things fairly easy: if weekdaily^* my routine is more pleasant than bothersome then it is more sustainable.

I am left-handed and when I do front crawl I turn my head to the left to breathe. Yesterday I noticed that another frequent swimmer, one faster than I, also turns his head to the left. Perhaps he's left-handed, or one of us is unusual, or perhaps one's handedness has little to do with which way one turns their head.

^*What's the word for words whose meaning is obvious but they aren't really accepted as words?