Blogging through the pain
Ejobsuccess asked a wonderful question about how to keep blogging when the fatigue from fibromyalgia is really bad. My first thought was, you don’t. The great thing about working online is that you get to set your own pace, so you can take a day off whenever you need too. However, as most fibromites know, this philosophy can often mean that we don’t end up doing anything because the fatigue & pain are always bad. Here are some tricks that I use, please share any thoughts that you have in the comments section.
1. Start a little at a time. I can now work at the computer most of the day, but I slowly had to build this up over a period of about a year.
2. Keep regular working hours. This doesn’t mean that you have to work constantly between 9 & 5, you can even start later in the day. You might only need to work an hour or two a day at first, possibly less. I’ve found that my body adjusts better when it knows that it’s “working time”. This also means that I don’t work until 3 or 4 in the morning, or when I can’t sleep. That’s a mistake I made when I first started out, & I paid for it dearly.
3. Find a comfortable place to blog. This can be sitting up in bed, or investing in a nice office chair & then padding it with extra pillows. I also have several different places to blog so I can get up & move around.
4. Realize it isn’t the end of the world if you miss a few days blogging. Set limits on what you can & can’t do, know when to push yourself & when to let things slide a little bit.
Most of all, enjoy what you do. This will make blogging through the pain easier.
Filed under: Fibromyalgia Support on June 25th, 2007
I haven’t been diagnosed with fibromyalgia, although my doctor believes all the indications are there. I’ve found that the best way to deal with the fatigue is to recognize what I work best at under various conditions.
By that I mean: I can do sponsored posts when my son is awake, but I can’t really read and comment on other peoples’ blogs then. So I do my paid posting in the morning, then take a break. In the evening I comment elsewhere (like now) and write a few drafts to pepper between the next day’s sponsored posts.
And I always take at least one day completely off from the computer. That’s to give my brain a rest.
I have CFS and Fibromyalgia both. I have found that I can push myself and work through the pain of FM. It’s the fatigue, cognitive dysfunction and other symptoms that cause me to not be very productive.
This may sound weird, but sometimes the pain is welcoming because it gives me a reason to focus on other things that end up being productive (blogging, for instance).
Aww thanks for posting this. How Did you get your doctor to diagnose this for you? It seems as if they wanna say that i am just depressed and that the pain could be assoiciated with sickle cell. But i been tired all my life and well at this point, i would just want to break down and cry. All the things they want you to try out is ridiculose. By that time i believe i will be depressed!
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