Feeling somewhat better…

Tonight I spent another quiet night at home after a long workday. I woke up feeling better, however the congestion had moved from my sinuses into my ears. My sore throat was gone, thankfully, so I know it was caused 100% by my nose problems. As the work day progressed my energy levels were low, but I started feeling better toward the end of the day.

I’m not sure how much of the waning energy was due to the over-the-counter allergy/sinus medicine that I was taking, but suffice it to say I’m doing much better now. We’ve got a karate test looming tomorrow night for our adults, which I’m looking forward to attending.

It struck me today that I don’t utilize enough of my options to stay home sick. I don’t think I was contagious at any point this week, but it is our option to stay home sick if we’re not feeling good and I probably should have done so. Stupid insane work ethic.

Speaking of work ethic, I’m having some difficulty not feeling guilty for the rest of my coworkers. As a part of my new role as Lead Developer, I was able to negotiate myself out of having to carry the support phone or be involved in our monthly change windows. I feel somewhat bad for those that are forced to bear that load now, even though I have done more than my fair share up to this point. It seems as my lot is changing on this team, I’m giving up many of the day-to-day tasks that were both rewarding and frustrating and replacing them with this strange amalgamation of semi-valuable guidance and paperwork. I think I need to figure out how to trick that part of my brain that says “you can only be valuable when coding” into understanding that the tasks I’m doing now enable coding to happen better.

Somehow I doubt that’s going to happen easily.