Sick Days - When a Geek Turns to Nyquil

I hate being sick. The whole idea of getting sick and calling off work sounds great on the surface but always manages to turn into a black hole of angst by the end of the day. Here's how it works:

5:30am - Wake up, realize you won't make it. Call or send an email in saying 'I'm sick'.
5:30 - 7:30am - Try to sleep more, because of the Nyquil or whatever you get maybe another hour of sleep but your body clock ain't havin' it.
7:30 - 10am - Get up and stumble around, eventually you make a pot of coffee and eat some corn flakes.
10am - 11am - Try to sleep more but the 4 cups of coffee you drank because you made to much is interrupting any sleep you might get. You're too wired to sleep but too loopy to do anything.
11 - 12pm - Eat some more, try to watch an old movie you've been meaning to get around to.
12-3pm - Look around at the house at all those 'honey-do' projects you've been thinking about and realize that you have some time to get to them. Attempt them for 45 minutes before realizing that you're too tired, too sick, too whatever to do them effectively. Leave a leaking container of 'Liquid Nails' on your porch.
3-5pm - Get depressed when you realize that you tried to everything but ended up doing nothing, not even resting.

I despise sick days; our being-is-doing lifestyle flies in the face of illness! How dare our weak bodies fall to infinetesimal bugs - don't they know we have a schedule to keep? I'm being silly of course; easy to do when you mix your cold meds and the combined ingredients leave you with a floaty-head-Steven-Wright-Jack-Handey kind of reality.

I think daytime TV plays a part in us wanting to feel better so as to resume our regularly scheduled lives. Have you tried to sit through an episode of Jerry Springer or The View? I've never felt time so completely wasted as I've felt after spending 30 or 60 minutes watching those programs. When the credits roll and you've watched 20 commercials for check-cashing places and correspondence schools - you just feel unemployable. You feel useless and you feel like you should be sent to prison for wasting your life like this. Why do I get like this every time I get sick?

The short answer is that we're human, we get sick and we should take the opportunity to stop and let the world pass us by for one day. Spend that day in quiet reflection that our sickness is just one day, compared to the sufferers of chronic illness the world over. Realize that our lives are so jam-packed with tasks that we risk losing sight of the larger picture. Balance the overarching desire to produce, to accomplish with the desire to reflect on what it is we are producing and accomplishing for.

But then, I'm not sure I've achieved a sufficient level of Zen to realize that. I just know I'm glad to be back at work.