The super-flare from two days ago is over. Now I’m just back to my normal pain level, although I’m just exhausted. It’s nice that it only lasted one day. In the moment it felt like it was never going to stop and that I would totally have to change my life to accommodate the new pain level. Sleeping well seems to have warded most of it off. I think I usually get fibromyalgia flares when I start coming down with the flu, does anyone else experience this?

Since I have fibromyalgia but look fairly normal I often feel guilty for having to take care of myself. I know that a lot of healthy people balance work, social lives and community responsibilities. I can really balance only one of these things so I choose survival. I choose to be as healthy as possible instead of stressed out. This means that I constantly have to say “no thank you” to a lot of responsibilities that aren’t absolutely necessary. I don’t even have enough time to keep up on my health the way I’d like to.

Exercise is mandatory for me so I can feel the best I possibly can but lately I rarely even have the time and energy I need for that. I know what it will mean if I agree to do something I can’t handle. I’ll get so sick that I won’t be able to accomplish whatever I said I’d do and I also will start having problems getting my work done. Does anyone else out there have fibro guilt?

I have been blogging for several years. I have fibromyalgia so it has been the main source of my income but it has never taken off to the point that I could buy a house, a manufactured home or even brand name groceries. I’m not complaining because I realize how lucky I am. I’ve had to supplement blogging with article writing and a technical job in order to survive. In a way this has really made me branch out and explore different avenues so I always have a backup when one income stream tanks.

Every once in awhile I wonder where I went wrong with blogging. I wouldn’t change my blogs; I love the interaction that I have with people. However, I think that I’ve never reached the status of a “problogger” because:

My niches are too small. I started this blog because I was looking for a blog about fibromyalgia and working from and couldn’t find one. However, it’s not general enough that I’d get the thousands or tens of thousands of hits that I’d need every day to really make a ton of money.

My niches are hard to monetize. I tried running contextual ads on this site for awhile but I wasn’t happy with the ads. Sure, they were related to fibromyalgia but they weren’t products or “cures” that I believed in.

My writing style is short and sweet. In general the blogs I enjoy reading are pretty short and only updated a few times a week. This isn’t the best for SEO but it’s what I could handle producing and what I enjoyed writing.

I’ve thought about putting all of my SEO skills together to make a new super powered blog that entails all of my knowledge but it just doesn’t sound fun. It sounds like drudgery to have to write about topics I don’t care about. I’d much rather write for people than search engines and that’s always been my downfall.