Short Takes #17: Time's Unfolding
William Stafford | Functional Freeze | Raise The Minimum Wage | You Can Always Take a Sick Day
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
| Willian Stafford, The Way It Is
…
Apologies for my absence from these pages in the past week or so. The recent snowpocalypse — we had 31 inches of snow and an arctic deep freeze lasting more than a week — hit me like a small-scale pandemic lockdown. Trapped inside, grappling with a disrupted daily routine, upon which the patterns that I depend were unmade. And of course, the endless chaos of today’s world — the wars, economic crises, and the turmoil in our streets.
But, as Stafford tells us, we cannot stop time’s unfolding. We must return to our work, our passions, and whatever it is that motivates us to get out of bed each morning and push on.
I wish you all the strength you need, as I hope to hold on to mine.
Functional Freeze
Maybe what I have recently experienced is a ‘functional freeze’, as described by Christina Caron:
People have equated functional freeze with being “tired and wired” — anxiety mixed with fatigue. Others have said that “freeze mode” is similar to “dissociating, escaping” or feeling like you’re “in a fog,” even though you’re able to get things done when you need to. Others explain that, though they might be participating in social activities, they aren’t enjoying themselves and feel “emotionally numb.”
In that sense, the term “functional freeze” could potentially be referring to many different things, said Janina Fisher, a clinical psychologist and an expert in treating trauma. The symptoms that social media users are describing might overlap with seasonal affective disorder, depersonalization or the long-term effects of past trauma, Dr. Fisher said.
Exactly.
PS: Clay Shirky: ‘In 2022, 41 percent of young adults reported feelings of anxiety most days.’
Raise The Minimum Wage
If the Washington elite really wanted to address the cost of living in the US, they might consider raising the minimum wage:
For the first time, more Americans will earn a minimum wage of $15 or more than will earn the federal minimum of $7.25, according to the Economic Policy Institute. The federal rate has remained unchanged since 2009, despite broad public support for an increase.
It has fallen to states and cities to push for higher minimum wages, while our federal officials don’t seem to be even discussing it. Oh, that’s right, ‘affordability’ is a hoax. I forgot.
PS: Ashley Wu, Annie Karni: ‘The House set a grim record in 2025, casting the fewest votes of the 21st century during the first session of a two-year Congress.’
You Can Always Take a Sick Day
Many employers require frontline workers to find substitutes to cover their shifts if they call in sick, which is immoral but not generally illegal.
In New York and California it’s illegal for your employer to require you to find a replacement as a condition for taking paid sick leave you’re owed, even as a part-time or seasonal worker. Elsewhere, workplaces may differ. But even in states with less empowering sick-leave laws (or those with none at all), staffing is usually a managerial responsibility for the obvious reason that, when you’re sick, you should be resting and recovering rather than scrambling to find shift coverage — or, worse, working in public with an infectious disease.
| Max Read
And, of course, many people don’t even get paid sick days (via GovDocs):
While there is no federal paid sick leave law for private employers, seventeen states and Washington, D.C., have mandatory paid sick leave laws: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, and Washington, D.C.
In addition, 3 states have mandatory paid leave for any reason laws: Illinois, Maine, and Nevada.
The past several years have seen wave after wave of new and amended paid leave laws at the state level (and local, as well). And, of course, each jurisdiction handles them differently.
In other words, a messy patchwork quilt that a reluctant federal government has imposed by inaction.