The mental math of taking time off

I know I’m allowed to take the time. I just don’t always believe it

I’m 12 days post-op from the first of three surgeries I’m having this year. Each one comes with close to two weeks of recovery, which in practice means about eight days of sick leave at a time.

I’ve done the math more than once. Three surgeries. Roughly 24 days away from work purely for medical leave between now and the end of April.

The number itself isn’t the problem. I don’t work somewhere that discourages time off, and no one has suggested I shouldn’t take it. Still, every time I tally it up, I feel a familiar tightening. Not panic, exactly. More like a reflexive need to double-check that I’m not miscalculating something, that I’m not overstepping.

I’m surprised by how often I ask myself if this is okay.

That question has been looping in my head since before the first surgery, usually surfacing when I’m otherwise feeling fine. When the pain is manageable, when recovery is progressing normally, when there’s no obvious reason to feel uneasy. That’s almost what makes it more noticeable.

This, I think, is part of life after burnout.

Before, I would have treated recovery like a logistical problem to solve around work. I would have minimized it, shortened it, found ways to stay plugged in just enough to feel useful. Now I know better, at least intellectually. I know that healing doesn’t work on productivity timelines, and that rest only counts if you actually take it.

And yet.

I find myself justifying it anyway, if only internally. I compare my time off to other kinds of leave, reminding myself that my company offers 14 weeks of parental leave without hesitation or side-eye. I remind myself that entire seasons of life are understood to require pause, and that we don’t demand proof of dedication from people during those stretches.

Still, medical recovery feels different. Less visible. Easier to downplay. Easier to treat as negotiable.

What I’m afraid of isn’t missing out in the obvious sense. It’s not FOMO so much as a quieter concern that something important will shift while I’m gone, that I’ll return slightly out of sync. That I’ll need longer than expected to get my footing again, not because I’m incapable, but because momentum has a way of continuing without you.

I don’t think this fear is unique to me. It feels culturally reinforced, especially in environments where being responsive and available has long been treated as a proxy for commitment. Where rest is encouraged in theory but still carries an undercurrent of guilt in practice. (Somewhere a European just laughed. I know this is a very American thing.)

Burnout didn’t teach me that rest matters. I already knew that. What it taught me was how deeply uncomfortable it feels to actually believe I’m allowed to take it without consequences.

So I’m sitting in that discomfort now, both physically and mentally. I’m doing the slower work of letting recovery be what it is. Not productive. Not optimized. Just necessary.

I’m up to 16 books read so far this year. I’ve watched Heated Rivalry and enough clips to watch it three times over. (“Reheated Rivalry”, as they say.) I’m caught up on The Traitors. I’m not doing any work whatsoever.

I’m taking the time, even when part of me wants to bargain with it. Even when the old instincts flare up and tell me I should be doing more. For now, that’s enough.