Jody’s Blog . . . a life after chronic fatigue syndrome

Thursday, August 13, 2009

I have 4 new articles up this week, 2 on Ncubator.ca and 2 on EmpowHer.com.

On Ncubator, they are “On Leaping Through the Portal” and “The Soothing Therapy of Knitting”.

On EmpowHer, they are “Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Mimics Stroke” and “Top Ten List for Recovery From Chronic Fatigue Syndrome”.

I should learn how to hyperlink on here someday.

I have been in touch with some other women who write about their chronic lives. What a pleasure, it’s like having a little writers’ community. I have been loving it. How great to be able to share our lives once again.

Monday, August 10, 2009

This virtual world has been a real education for me these past few months.

I have done a little writing for a few different sites at a penny a word. Learned something from each of them.

Last week I began actually working for EmpowHer.com, a great women’s health website. I had been contributing articles on CFS to this site over the past four months, and now I have the opportunity to do some freelancing for them.

After being so sick for so many years, and after only being back online for such a short time, this is like a dream come true.

Wow.

Only on the internet!

Monday, July 13, 2009

I guess it’s been a good week. I know it has.

Yet I feel … unsatisfied.

That seems strange to me. I am involved in things that just three months ago would have been beyond my ability to imagine. If you’d told me then what the next three months would hold, I would have … doubted that it was even possible.

Three months ago, right around now, I was newly online, with my very own laptop that my Baby bought for me from some money he’d inherited. At that time I was checking my email once a day (there was never any there) and checking my bank balance online. And then I’d close it up.

Since then, I have started writing for EmpowHer.com, and have now 18 articles published there, all taken from my website Ncubator.ca, which has 46 articles at present.

I’ve added this blog with posts from mid-April (starting during the isolationist time period that was, unbeknownst to me drawing to an end) to about a week ago.

I’ve had a few dozen requests to reprint some of my articles, and have seen some of my articles on numerous different websites.

I was invited to do an interview, and a podcast, within Ncubator’s first two weeks of existence.

All of this is fantastic, especially considering how solitary life had been till recently. I no longer feel that if I were to disappear, nobody outside of my immediate family would notice. That is very comforting.

I have done some writing for pay, a couple different copywriting gigs, and now a new writing job for Edubook.com which I am enjoying.

I belong to Facebook, with a bunch of old friends, and am a member and now an administrator (assistant) on Cort Johnson’s Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Forums (Phoenix Rising).

I have reconnected with some old friends who I exchange emails with again. And I write, and write and write without vanishing into fog.

So how can I feel unsatisfied?

I have pondered this, it doesn’t sound right to me either.

Here’s what I think.

I think that it is NOT that I am dissatisfied with any of this. Only a moron could be.

I think it’s because, … I just want … more.

This feels more positive. Because it means, I can handle all this stuff that I have going on, and still have time and the ability to move into more things than I’m doing now.

I had been afraid, with each new step, that this one or that one would cause the crash that I feared would be inevitable.

But I am still standing. Not only standing, but beginning to run. And still itching to run some more.

May 22, 2009 

I have had to sleep and rest more in this past week than I have in a long time.

But I’m also able to do much more than I have in a very long time.

I guess it’s like having to stop and put more gas in the tank of your car, the more driving you do. 

I posted a couple of articles this week, and now this entry.

Ncubator’s only been up for not quite 3 weeks, and things feel like they’re coming together faster than I expected.

I’m shooting for 3 new articles up per week, and maybe a couple of blog entries. 

This time last year, I was in the midst of a crash after catching the flu.

Then I twisted my ankle in early June and had to stay off it for a week or so.

The added stressors seemed to make the crash more intense and longer to get over.

 This year is much better.  

Last year I was thinking, wistfully, about writing again someday. Still had nothing to say, nor the energy to say anything with.

Reading seven books per week from the library was my literary achievement.

And, it goes without saying, my emails to my naturopath Dr. Kelly Upcott pretty much every week.

 That was the only writing I was doing, but as I look back I know — and I knew it at the time — writing to her was so important for me. Helped to bring me back from the dead.

Image by Erich Röthlisberger from Pixabay

May 1, 2009

 Alan and I got a step closer to having Ncubator ready to open its doors. I’m pretty excited. 

A certain balancing act is required. I get so intent upon writing, I could do it for hours. And I do it for hours. 

All the while I must keep in the back of my mind, that I do not want to burn out and crash.

And so I will make myself go and rest. Read a book. Wash some dishes. Knit a little on my latest project. 

My energy has been so good recently and I’m having so much fun, it’s easy to overdo.

Then I’ll feel the “body stone” sensations swirling and whirling, and feel my brain slow right down, and know I need to lay down awhile. 

I’m not much of a marathon runner anymore. Nor even much of a sprinter. But my strength and clarity are coming back, a bit more and a bit more.

Just don’t push, Jody. Let this thing happen in its own time.