Bang Your Head, Corporate Anxiety Will Drive You Mad
Also, distractions about Dubuque and plankton
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Everyone go work at Rob Hill’s company! They rob hills!
The New York Times has a thing online of reader tips for having a good mental health day.
Some of the tips make me kind of mad. Or at least jealous. And mad. :
I do what I want to do. Period. Swimming outside on a warm summer day at 6 a.m., then to Starbucks. Then go bike riding for 50 miles. Sure, I check my work email now and then. But what made a difference was that I had told everyone in advance I was taking a mental health day. So no one was expecting me to be online and I knew there wouldn’t be anything pressing.
Rob Hill, Minneapolis
Wherever Rob works, well, it must be nice. Telling everyone he’s taking that day and then doing his Ironman stuff. What an enlightened workplace. I’ve worked in nice places but a few very unhealthy ones as well and I’m thinking a lot about taking mental health days and how that goes over.
When you take a mental health day, is it a Mental Health Day or a smuhnuhmunnahsnuh Day? By that I mean, how does it work in most employment situations these days? Can you boldly state that you’re taking a mental health day or do you have to be a little vague about what you’re going off to do?
I think we can all agree that having the occasional work day off to rest and recharge is a good thing. We’re not machines and our own health is more important than the productivity of your labor’s setting. We’re all enlightened here, right? We all get it.
But still.
If I have a job in an intense workplace where there are piles of things to get done, pressing deadlines, and demanding supervisors, do I really feel comfortable saying to one of those supervisors, “I just need a day off to go walk the dog and have a bath and watch movies"? I’m not sure I do feel comfortable doing that. Because if I do, here’s what I may introducing to that relationship:
Vulnerability - The idea that I lack the mental strength to hammer away at the job relentlessly forever. And of course, that’s EVERYONE, but if I expose that, what price do I pay for it?
Insecurity - If I am doubted by the boss or the team, will I be relied on less? Will I be given fewer big tasks? Will I then be less valuable and thus more expendable when layoffs come?
Shame - If I am not at work, others may have to do yet more in my absence. Of course, this is a management problem and not a labor one. Management should have prepared more, spent more, planned better but when I come back in the next day, having taken a mental health day, how will they look at me? Certainly, someone will say, “Good for you for taking a mental health day, that’s awesome,” but do they now hate me juuuuust a little bit more?
And so faced with all those factors, do I say, “I’m taking a mental health day” or do I just invent some other reason? I think I invent another reason. And when I say I, I mean literally me, John Moe, the guy who’s all about mental health transparency. I work for myself so this is all theoretical but I think I’m carrying that stigma with me from unhealthy and unstable workplaces that make me extra protective.
I suspect that even people who would feel comfortable saying that they deal with a depressive disorder wouldn’t use the phrase “mental health day”.
Or even Metal Health day.
Who wouldn’t want to spend extra time in Dubuque?
I thought about this earlier today when I was in Dubuque, Iowa. A city I LOVED, by the way! I was there to give a speech at Clarke University and I just loved the whole city.
I’m a Fighting Saints fan! I just found out they exist a few hours ago! They should change the name!
So I was in Dubuque giving a speech last night at Clarke (named after the explorer in the Lewise and Clarke Expeditione) and stayed in a hotel there overnight. “I’ll get up early and get on the road by seven,” I thought, "then I’ll be home well before noon and have the rest of the day to WORK.”
And then I thought, “I’d rather sleep in a bit, maybe go out for coffee and breakfast. Get on the road a bit later, take my time.”
So which idea gets the win? Well, I think to myself, “You’ve been working a lot lately, lots of stuff happening at night, lots of stress, you deserve a bit slower of a day today.” And that’s what I did.
And it occurred to me, hours later, that NOT spending every possible moment working is not a PRIVILEGE but a RIGHT. I don’t need to earn the opportunity to let up in my labor, I have that right and my mind and body have that necessity.
I wonder if other people with histories of depression run into this kind of thing also: internal negotiations about whether or not you truly deserve the thing that you automatically always deserve and require. Like time off. In Dubuque.
I like this picture
People don’t know about thing they haven’t heard about
As of July 2022, Americans will be able to call 988 for mental health emergencies and suicidal crises, just as they’ve long been able to call 911 for a variety of other emergencies. The number will work for both phone calls and texting.
Apparently, 80% of Americans don’t know this at all and only 1% are “very familiar” with the development.
The existence of this option is good news because it will keep people in crisis safer. 911 calls often fall to the police and there’s a much bigger chance of violence resulting from their presence in a mental health situation than if the response to the crisis was assistance from mental health professionals.
And we got a ways to go before this line goes live but I sure hope someone is stepping on the gas to increase that 1% or at least that 80%
A short film about plankton
It might be soothing if you’re a person. It might make you hungry if you’re a whale.