I called in sick on a Monday.
There was a leadership training in the afternoon. The third time it had been rescheduled. Plus four or five meetings packed into the morning. I hadn’t been to work since Thursday. Friday was already off. The weekend came and went and then Monday arrived and my body just said no.
Not a cold. Not a fever. Just no. The kind of tired that doesn’t come from staying up late. The kind that builds over months, quietly, underneath a life that looks fine from the outside.
So I sent the message. “Not feeling well, taking the day.” And then I sat with the guilt.
I tried going to BANQ first. The big public library. My usual spot. Closed on Mondays. Of course.
So I walked to Crew Café, a place I used to go back in 2019, during my working holiday visa days. Different life, same city. I remembered sitting there seven years ago, fresh off a plane from Brazil, trying to figure out how to build a career in a country where I barely spoke the language. The tables were laptop-free now. I did some quick work on my Pixel anyway, standing by the window like someone pretending to check their phone.
Then I kept walking. Found a new place, Esplanada Tranquille. Got a filter coffee. Opened the laptop. Twelve percent battery. No plug in sight.
And sitting there, with nothing left to distract me and a laptop that was about to die, I saw it. The whole pattern. Laid out like a map I’d been carrying folded up for years without opening.
Here’s the thing about calling in sick when you’re not technically sick. The voice in your head doesn’t care about nuance. It just loops. They’re going to think you’re irresponsible. They’re going to think you don’t care. You’re going to be the person who didn’t show up.
And the cruel part is, this fear is loudest in the people who actually care. The checked-out people don’t spiral in cafés about what their skip-level thinks. If you’re lying awake about it, you’re probably not the problem.
But knowing that doesn’t stop the loop.
I’ve been avoiding things like this for a long time. Not just meetings. Job interviews I didn’t go to. Networking events I backed out of. Opportunities that required sustained social exposure and got too heavy before I even started. I’ve lost things because of it. Real things. Before, I didn’t understand the mechanism. Now I do.
If something is already difficult, and I’m already depleted, the difficulty becomes enormous. And if I have the option to not show up, I will take it. Because I don’t want pain.
That’s not laziness. It’s pain protection. Avoidance has a logic to it. It’s a system your brain built to keep you safe from the thing that hurts. And if you don’t understand the logic, you just judge yourself for it, which feeds the avoidance. A perfect loop.
I started thinking about when the weight lifts. When I actually feel like myself.
Three things came to mind. Working on my projects. Walking through the city without a destination. And weekends, but only the ones where I don’t drag Monday’s anxiety into Saturday morning like a backpack I forgot to take off.
What do they share? No audience. No judgment. No performance.
That’s a clue. A big one.
When I’m building my Cherry projects, I’m not performing for anyone. There’s no meeting where I have to justify the architecture. No training where I have to demonstrate growth. No Slack thread where I have to sound competent and calm. It’s just me and the work. And in that space, I’m not depleted. I’m alive.
The version of me that feels most real is the one that isn’t being watched. Not because I’m doing anything wrong when I’m being watched, but because the watching changes everything. It turns building into performing. It turns thinking into justifying. It turns being into proving.
I want to be honest about this part, because it’s complicated. The job gives me real things.
I like building software. I like the craft of it. I like helping my team grow. I like the income. For the first time in my life I earn enough to cover myself and my partner comfortably. That’s not small. That’s everything, actually, for someone who moved to another country with nothing and built a career from scratch in a language that isn’t hers.
But a good life on the outside and survival mode on the inside can coexist for a long time. You can have the stable income and the team that respects you and the career that looks right on paper, and still be running on fumes underneath. The gap between how things look and how things feel has a cost. It’s just a cost you don’t notice until you stop moving long enough to feel it.
On a Monday, in a café in Montreal, with 12% battery and no charger, I felt it.
I made a list. Not a to-do list. A blockers list. The things standing between me and the life I actually want, not the one I’m performing.
Work bleeding into personal time. Not because anyone demands it, but because I let it. I could finish at four most days. I rarely do. There’s an addictive quality to closing every loop, anticipating tomorrow’s problems, feeling complete before I log off. My partner has noticed. It’s not ambition driving it. It’s anxiety-driven thoroughness. The discomfort of leaving something unfinished is worse than the discomfort of working an extra two hours. So I keep going.
The job expanding past its edges. More scope, more responsibility, more “just this one thing” until the role I signed up for is three roles stacked on top of each other in a trenchcoat. The meetings, the training sessions, the participation, the performance. Some days are fine. Some days the exposure alone drains me at a level I can’t explain to anyone who hasn’t felt it.
Staying in build mode instead of shipping. This one’s personal. My projects aren’t a hobby. They’re the business I’m trying to build. I know my potential. I know what these tools could become. But building feels safe, and marketing feels like exposure. Shaping something into a real product and putting it in front of people who might have opinions. That’s the part I avoid. The irony is heavy: I genuinely want to make a living from this. And the thing stopping me is the same thing that made me skip a Monday.
Three different problems. Same root.
Avoidance of discomfort.
I’m not saying the job is bad. I’m not saying I need to quit tomorrow. I’m saying I’ve been surviving when I could be living, and I didn’t notice the difference until I ran out of battery in a café and had nowhere to look but inward.
Naming the thing doesn’t fix the thing. I know that. But it changes your relationship to it. The avoidance stops being a mystery and starts being a signal. Oh, I’m avoiding this because it’s uncomfortable, not because something is wrong with me.
I walked back that afternoon through streets I’ve walked a hundred times. Same route I walked in 2019, when everything was new and uncertain and somehow lighter. The city was the same. I was different. Not fixed. Not lighter, exactly. Just clearer. Like someone cleaned the windshield and the road ahead is the same road, but now I can actually see it.
Twelve percent battery. No plug in sight. But I’ll find one when I have to.