Yesterday, a little after my lunchtime pilates session and a little before my afternoon blog, the real world called and I was stupid enough to answer the phone. My boss quite reasonably wanted to know if I'd mind awfully returning to work at some convenient point next month. My mood dropped like a BA Boeing 777 and I found myself embedded in the turf of despondency having failed to reach the runway of healthy perspective.
I've been off work for nearly two months following spinal surgery. As a public sector worker, I'm entitled to up to six months of sickness absence on full pay. However, I used three months' worth following the road accident that smashed up my spine over a year ago. Nevertheless, so good are my employer's welfare provisions that I've become very accustomed to my life of leisure and the prospect of returning to work is both daunting and inconvenient. Once tasted, salaried freedom is an addictive brew.
Mine is scarcely a hard-luck story by the standards of those of you who work in the Victorian hell that is the private sector. Yet I did break a number of bones and have endured a protracted and often agonising process of recovery, so I've hardly swung the lead, certainly not by the standards of the public sector. Yet I must make one shameful confession: I hated work so much that simply not being there struck me as a major boon of debilitating injury.
Not that I'd have chosen the injury, but that line of thought gave me insight into how a chronic malady can become a vocation. I identified with all those jaded soldiers with suspiciously similar bayonet wounds, 'copping a blighty' by acquiring injuries that wouldn't kill or maim them, but would see them on the next boat home.
It's not that I want to do nothing. Naturally, I dabbled with spending the day in my dressing gown in the company of Jeremy Kyle, Frasier Crane and Noel Edmonds (Celebrity Big Brother take note), but their limited charms diminished in direct proportion to my dosage of pain-killers. I certainly enjoy not having to get up in the dark, but I don't sleep with the endless determination of a tree-sloth or a teenager.
During my first long absence, I got through three short OU courses in genetics, cosmology and astronomy. I'd always bemoaned my truncated science education so I took a chance to redress my balance and keep my brain alive. This time round, I’ve discovered blogging and pilates, built up my eBay empire and supervised the refurbishment of our house. While being trapped indoors does sap your sanity and your ability to make small-talk, I relish the absence of chaff.
By chaff, I mean the tedious, soul-draining, futile errata with which the average working day is padded out: small-talk, office politics, dressing-up, dressing-down, mindless bureaucracy, commuting, waiting on hold, waiting for late-comers, waiting for the slow and stupid, being condescended to by the fast and smart, squinting at the crawling hands of the clock with all your telekinetic might.
In cosmic terms, we're less than dust, just inconceivably small flashes of existence in an infinite void, at least according to my positive-thinking coach. Taken together with the ostensibly grim Myth of Sisyphus, this can be encouraging. What we do with our days can have no cosmic significance. It doesn't therefore matter how arbitrary or lunatic we are in deciding what to do with our lives, as long as we're busy and fulfilled.
I might use some of this tortured persiflage in my next job application. Suffice to say, being away from work has given me a new perspective. I want to be busy and engaged, but I resent the fact that going to a place of work usually obliges you to waste half your life on mindless drudgery before you get close to doing a meaningful job of work. I just need to find a way of working from home while keeping all my marbles rolling around in my head: suggestions, job offers and orthopaedic seating welcome.
