Chronic Rants

I used to work in an office. Back then, my chronic illnesses were more manageable.

Then I worked in an office 4 days a week and from home the 5th day. That helped. But eventually, that wasn’t enough.

Now I don’t have a job at all. Still, I’ve been making some money here and there when I can. Consulting work has gone ok, but I’d like to do something different. The problem with consulting is that I have to be ready to work at a particular time and place. Sure, I can often schedule the at-home part of the work whenever I want, but I have to meet with clients too. That part is really tough with a chronic illness. And that means I can’t take on as many clients as I need to.

I like the idea of “passive income.” With this method, I do the work up front and the money comes in later, without me having to be present at a particular time and place. For example, imagine I wrote a book. I’d put in a lot of effort up front on my own schedule to write it and market it, then when it came out I’d do some more marketing, but it would be less work at that point. The money would come in, but I’d have already done more of the work from the comfort of my living at my own pace. Sounds good, right?

The thing is, the work still has to be done. And I’m having trouble making that happen consistently.

I’ve found some other people who are trying to do similar things. One is married, has a young baby, and works a full time job, yet she works on her business more consistently than I work on mine. Then again, she doesn’t have a chronic illness. That doesn’t mean her life is easier or that she has more hours in the day. I’m constantly amazed by how productive she is. But it does mean that her schedule is fairly predictable. She works on the bus to and from her job each day. She works at night after the baby is in bed. She carves out time every weekend.

By comparison, I can’t even get a morning routine going. Some mornings I wake up and can do work within an hour or two. Other days I’m not able to do any work at all, and I go to bed without having even tried. Some days I get a lot done, but it has nothing to do with the new business. Today I wrote a blog post for that business and did a bit of reading. That’s not too bad. I also filed away some personal papers, sold something on Craigslist, did a ton of texting with various people, fixed something small on my mother’s computer, cleaned out my email inbox, made some phone calls, prepared an easy dinner and did the dishes, and took a shower. For someone else, that wouldn’t sound like much. Except for dinner, they’d do all of that before they left for work in the morning and on their lunch break. But for me, that was a lot. I had a busy weekend and I didn’t feel great. I never went outside. I wanted to bake, but never got to it. In fact, there’s a lot I wanted to do that I never got to. But I feel good about having done all of that. For me, that’s really big!

And that’s the problem. The every day things in life still have to be done, and I never know which days I’ll barely be able to get those things done and which days I’ll have the energy for a little extra. That means I can’t set a schedule.

I would love to say that I’ll get up at 8am every day, eat breakfast and work until 11am, exercise (ha!) and eat lunch, do personal stuff until 3pm, then have the rest of the day free. Or maybe do more work in the afternoon. But I can’t do anything like that. Every day is so different. Today I’m in too much pain to walk down a flight of stairs. Another day stairs are no big deal. Some days I can’t doing any writing because my brain just won’t function well enough. Other days I zip off a blog post in 1/2 hour. There’s no way to plan it. It just is.

It’s hard to explain all of this to the other entrepreneurs I talk to. They can’t understand why, without a job, I can’t put in more time on my business. And I get frustrated that even on my best days I can’t put in as much time as they do on their worst. I’m trying, but it’s just not working.

I know I need a schedule of some sort. That’s how I work best. This fit-the-work-in-when-I-can method means that other things get in the way and I end up answering emails and scanning Facebook instead of working. I need a better method.

If only I knew what that was.

Edit [3/23/16]: I just came across this post today (good timing!) and want to share it. If you’re looking for a way to earn some money yourself, maybe it will give you some useful ideas.