I appear to have picked something up. I imagine possibly while sitting in a large theatre on Thursday. It is especially frustrating, as on another recent weekend I would have been completely fine to just lounge about on the sofa watching TV and drinking sweet tea. But I have work that needs doing. And this is the classic freelancer dilemma – whether you can afford to take the day to recover and make up for it with a longer day, later in the week, or whether to push through in case you get worse. Or, of course, to be ill and let your clients know that you are and that there might be a day or two delay. The latter is one that I avoid as much as I possibly can. There are a couple of other alternatives, if feeling really bad: to ask someone else to do the work for you. We do have the benefit of having the other person sometimes able to pick things up. And I think it’s a very long time since I had to book another freelancer to cover for me. And the final alternative, that I can think of, is having to tell the client that you will not be able to do the work at all and they will need to find someone else. This is something I have almost never done but, when project managing, have had plenty of freelancers do, and it’s usually fine, with a some scrabbling to find a replacement, but almost always there is someone who can step in. I am not sure what dissuades me so much from this final alternative. A lot of it, I believe is my psychology, whereby I always always try not to let people down and avoid conflict as far as I possibly can. There is also the issue of losing the money that you had banked on, too.
Anyway, I don’t think I’m unwell enough to need such a drastic step. I don’t have a fever, which is what would normally guarantee me not being able to work. So I will go for either pushing through or allowing myself to take the day and catching up further in the week.
So sorry, I wish you a super speedy recovery. 🫂