Does Work Make You Sick?

Knock on wood, I asked my husband yesterday if he can remember the last time this real estate agent was sick. I mean really sick. In bed sick, moaning and groaning, unable or unwilling to get up. It seems that when I was the communications director for a Minnesota nonprofit, I managed to use up almost every sick day I had per year. Yet, now that I live in Sacramento selling real estate, I cannot recall the last time I didn’t feel well.

Oh, wait, perhaps it was after our Galapagos trip in 2005. We thought it would be fun to end the vacation with a trip to the jungle in the middle of Ecuador. Yeah, sticky, hot and buggy, with giant croaking frogs, screaming monkeys and pouring rain at 3 AM — kinda like Sacramento short sales, now that I pause to reflect. The water wasn’t as safe to drink as we were led to believe. I’ll spare you the details but let’s just say that giardiasis is very unpleasant.

But since I’ve been a Sacramento real estate agent, I haven’t been sick one single day. Have not spent one day for the past 11 years under-the-weather, so to speak. On the surface, you could probably conclude that’s because Sacramento real estate is so all-fired consuming that I don’t have time to be sick. People who hate their jobs are often ill. I love my job. So, that, and I suspect even more important is that I spend most of my productive work time in front of my computer and not in the company of little kids.

It’s the kids that get you sick. They are walking little germ-carrying time bombs. And they make everybody else around them sick as well. When I hear a client sniffle over the phone, I ask: Do you have kids? Yup, well, there ya go. The two ingredients for a healthful life: no kids and self employment.

We are in south Florida on vacation, and there are kids everywhere. It’s hard to get away from them. We are heading off to tour the Everglades today, so don’t be surprised if an alligator or two pops up in my blog along the way.