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.

I try to stay positive about my situation in life and fibromyalgia in general. I usually do an ok job of this but sometimes it just gets overwhelming. I wasn’t feeling well last week and I hadn’t gone shopping in a while because I was waiting until thanksgiving. This meant that everything in my house had to be cooked; no convenience food around.

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.

If I could tell fibromites and friends of fibromites one piece of advice it would be to make your life flexible. I find that I can accomplish a lot if I work at my own pace. That’s why I love my job. It’s so important and helpful that I can work at home when I want. I think that I make more money then if I was working a set 9-5. I know I would crumble within a few weeks or days and the pain and fatigue would just take over. When I feel up to it I whip out the digital cameras and take pictures for blog posts. If I’m not feeling well then I just sit around and type posts and articles. I work a lot but I do work that I can handle.

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.