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?

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.

I was exhausted from cleaning all day and I was super hungry. I started making squash which is more work then I was up for. Plus it messed up the kitchen. I’m not a cook and I somehow angered the squash. It tasted like sulfur and the whole house smelled like rotten eggs. So my once clean house smelled horrible, there were dishes everywhere and I still didn’t have anything to eat. It just felt like so much to handle until I stepped back and looked at it. It was nothing that I couldn’t fix.

When a person is sick there’s a tendency to get overwhelmed, a valid tendency. I remember one time when I almost had a nervous breakdown just because the blinds in the kitchen broke. I was practically hysterical and could trace out exactly how the blinds would ruin my life. One of my friends pointed out “Ok, I know you are stressed out but the blinds fell. That is all that happened. I know for a fact that you’ve pushed yourself through school and to find a job that you can do with fibromyalgia and you aren’t going to be taken down a set of blinds.”

Then I could just laugh and envision my biography “She was doing so well until the blinds fell.” I use that analogy a lot, “The blinds fell”, even when it’s for something else. Sometimes the blinds fall but you can put them back up when you feel better.

Instead, I probably work more than a 40 hour work week but it doesn’t bother my fibromyalgia that much because I don’t have the stress of a set schedule and I can also pick which hours I work.

I find that if there is something that has to be done, like cleaning the apartment at a certain time, meeting a friend for a set lunch, or even having to go to the Post Office on a certain day things get out of hand quickly. It’s better to just set loose plans and you’ll be able to accomplish a lot more in the long run then burning out.

First off, spending times in large crowds is rarely fun for me. I have to wear shoes, that hurts. Then I have to stand up for a long time, that hurts. This means that the next day I’ll probably be really sick, maybe even too sick to work. Then I’ll have to spend the rest of the weekend trying to catch up on work which will just make the fiber flare angrier. So thank you for asking, but please understand if I say no.

Sincerely,

Sarakastic

Changed climates. I moved to a lower elevation, about 2500 feet lower. It’s not humid here but I’ve always live in the West so I don’t know how humidity effects fibromyalgia. It’s also a lot warmer in both the summer and the winter. I won’t have to deal with snow.

I started getting more sleep. My new apartment is so quiet; there aren’t even any dogs that bark in the neighborhood. This means I can go to sleep when I’m tired. I still wake up several times a night, but that’s my bodies fault instead of my neighbors. I also bought a new mattress that was comfortable for me. I was expecting to spend several thousand dollars on a decent one, but really even the $12,000 one wasn’t comfortable to me. I ended up with a $700 coil mattress with wrapped springs and a thin layer of memory foam on top.

I stopped stressing out (Well, ok, I cut down my stress by probably 75%, the remaining 25% is still probably above average). Through my use of the “Change Your Life in Seven Days” book I learned actual coping skills. I also read Carol Tuttle’s book “It’s Just My Nature” and am learning more about her program. I think with fibromyalgia there will always be more stress and more situations that read as emergencies simply because it makes life so much more difficult. However, I’ve learned to not let the little stuff break me. I have even changed my work at home job several times. I’d rather work a few more hours a week and not be stressed out. I find that if I earn more per hour, but have to deal with cranky editors, it’s not worth it. I end up getting so sick that I can’t work as many hours, so the dollar amount evens out to the same but I’m just sick and miserable in one of the scenarios.

Life is still hard. I am still not in remission. I am still scared that all the progress I’ve made will disappear. I just wanted to write this to say, it does get better, at times it’s even manageable. It doesn’t go away, but it does get better. I’ve struggled with this illness for over half my life. I’ve watched other people get “cured” or go into remission and wondered “Why not me?” It will always be a difficult disease to deal with, but as you learn more and can change your life to work with your illness, it gets easier, it gets better.

Body to brain: We are on fire.

Brain: That is no good I’ll fix it.

Body: It didn’t work.

Brain: Fire! Fire! Here is now a long list of everything that is wrong in my life with the worst possible conclusion because maybe one of those things is causing the fire.

One of the things that helps me most after the medicines and homeopathic treatments is simply knowing my limits. If I get too tired my emotions slide in a matter of seconds. It’s my body’s way of saying that I don’t like this, get me out, even though I can’t get out of fibromyalgia. So instead, I just have to push myself…but not too hard.