Day 471: I’m still here, but still have health issues
Where I’ve been:
It’s been more than 5 weeks since I last got any writing work done. I was sick with a variety of things (I blogged about it here), but I discovered that what mostly kept me from writing was the sheer fatigue of being ill.
I have writer friends who battle chronic illnesses which are much worse than IBS. I’m starting to realize that it’s not just the pain they feel, but it must also be the tiredness and fuzzy brain that they have to battle through in order to get writing done.
For the 2-3 weeks when I had sinus headaches, the headache naturally kept me from my computer, but when dealing only with the IBS issues, while the discomfort was pretty much constant, the pain wasn’t. It came and went irregularly, so it wasn’t as if I was in pain all the time. And yet I couldn’t work because I also had to manage the bone-tiredness, and the way it was so hard for me to think.
Now that I’ve been on my elimination diet for about 3 weeks, I’m starting to feel like I have more energy. However, I have also learned that in this season of my life, I really do not handle stress very well—or at least, not as well as I used to. Every time something comes up to cause anxiety, no matter how trivial, my IBS also flares up. They are like Curly, Larry, and Moe—some external problem, anxiety, IBS.
I am also still not sleeping well, which makes it hard to concentrate. I only sleep for a few hours—maybe 5 or 6—before I wake up and can’t get back to sleep. I end up feeling tired during the day, and my brain is a bit fuzzy like it’s turned into a stuffed animal. But on a positive note, I’ve finally settled into the sleep schedule I had wanted, where I go to bed around 10 pm every night.
Monday and Tuesday:
I managed to do writing-related business on Monday and Tuesday (yesterday), mostly to do with the multi-author box set that I’m participating in. I’m not the only person who’s had problems—we were shocked when two of the authors passed away, while the husband of another author has to have surgery. So we moved the release date from this month to next month.
I’m doing a Street Team media blast, but there isn’t much else I can do to help promote the box set. I just don’t have a huge online presence, and the effort I have to expend to keep up with readers on Facebook causes even more anxiety, which makes my IBS flare up. I tried to play to my strengths, which is my blogging. I had posted some knitting patterns related to the stories in the box set, and they have gotten a decent number of hits so far, which is great considering they cost me nothing.
I did as much marketing as I could ahead of time so that I don’t have much to do before the release date of the anthology. It still took 8 hours on Monday and 2 hours yesterday.
But it was nice to finally get back to doing actual work. The problem was that I only slept about 6 hours each on Sunday night and Monday night, so when working on Monday and Tuesday, I was pretty tired. Yesterday, I tried to do some writing work on my book, but only got about half an hour before I called it quits because I was so tired.
But I had much more energy on Monday and Tuesday than I’ve had for the past several weeks, which was what enabled me to get any work done.
Today:
Last night I got 8 hours of sleep, which was a relief. I’m still in a little pain from my IBS, and I’m a little worried I won’t be able to get much work done today, but I feel a little less tired.
I started off with 1 hour of Japanese study. (I managed to do some Japanese study during the past month, although not consistently every day, so I built up a bit of a backlog of flashcards to review. Since I’m behind, I did as much as I could in an hour and stopped there.)
I also did my Bible reading and Surrender Statement, and that seemed to help me refocus my mind and calm my heart.
The only part of “clearing the decks” that I didn’t do today was house chores, but I’ve been slacking off a bit on that this past month since I’ve been feeling poorly.
Next I'll get back into book 4 of my Lady Wynwood’s Spies series. I had been in the middle of blocking scenes, so I’ll read through my blocking notes again to get back into the story, then continue blocking. Since my IBS is still acting up a little, and since I’ve been sick for so long, I’ll only aim for a few hours of writing work today and not try to push myself.
***
I thought I would simply be reading through my old blocking notes and then continuing, but I added to one scene some necessary things I had missed earlier, and then found a slight change I needed to make for one character’s spiritual arc. It ended up making the spiritual arc much stronger, so I’m happy about that, but it also requires me to rework the ending of this scene, which is tough. I still haven’t finished because my IBS started flaring up, so I decided to stop for a late lunch.
I’m not sure if I’ll get back to work after lunch. It depends on how I feel (physically).
***
After lunch, my IBS is still bothering me, so I’m going to stop here for the day. It’s not bad, I managed to work for almost 4 hours despite not feeling great.
Outlining: time spent: 0
Blocking: time spent: 3 hours, 45 minutes
Editing: Time spent: 0
Writing: Time spent: 0
Writing: Total number of words: n/a
Writing: Overall writing speed: n/a
Time spent doing other writing-related business: 15 minutes
My takeaway for today: It’s not just the discomfort and pain from the IBS that makes it hard to work, it’s also the fatigue and fuzzy brain.
It’s been more than 5 weeks since I last got any writing work done. I was sick with a variety of things (I blogged about it here), but I discovered that what mostly kept me from writing was the sheer fatigue of being ill.
I have writer friends who battle chronic illnesses which are much worse than IBS. I’m starting to realize that it’s not just the pain they feel, but it must also be the tiredness and fuzzy brain that they have to battle through in order to get writing done.
For the 2-3 weeks when I had sinus headaches, the headache naturally kept me from my computer, but when dealing only with the IBS issues, while the discomfort was pretty much constant, the pain wasn’t. It came and went irregularly, so it wasn’t as if I was in pain all the time. And yet I couldn’t work because I also had to manage the bone-tiredness, and the way it was so hard for me to think.
Now that I’ve been on my elimination diet for about 3 weeks, I’m starting to feel like I have more energy. However, I have also learned that in this season of my life, I really do not handle stress very well—or at least, not as well as I used to. Every time something comes up to cause anxiety, no matter how trivial, my IBS also flares up. They are like Curly, Larry, and Moe—some external problem, anxiety, IBS.
I am also still not sleeping well, which makes it hard to concentrate. I only sleep for a few hours—maybe 5 or 6—before I wake up and can’t get back to sleep. I end up feeling tired during the day, and my brain is a bit fuzzy like it’s turned into a stuffed animal. But on a positive note, I’ve finally settled into the sleep schedule I had wanted, where I go to bed around 10 pm every night.
Monday and Tuesday:
I managed to do writing-related business on Monday and Tuesday (yesterday), mostly to do with the multi-author box set that I’m participating in. I’m not the only person who’s had problems—we were shocked when two of the authors passed away, while the husband of another author has to have surgery. So we moved the release date from this month to next month.
I’m doing a Street Team media blast, but there isn’t much else I can do to help promote the box set. I just don’t have a huge online presence, and the effort I have to expend to keep up with readers on Facebook causes even more anxiety, which makes my IBS flare up. I tried to play to my strengths, which is my blogging. I had posted some knitting patterns related to the stories in the box set, and they have gotten a decent number of hits so far, which is great considering they cost me nothing.
I did as much marketing as I could ahead of time so that I don’t have much to do before the release date of the anthology. It still took 8 hours on Monday and 2 hours yesterday.
But it was nice to finally get back to doing actual work. The problem was that I only slept about 6 hours each on Sunday night and Monday night, so when working on Monday and Tuesday, I was pretty tired. Yesterday, I tried to do some writing work on my book, but only got about half an hour before I called it quits because I was so tired.
But I had much more energy on Monday and Tuesday than I’ve had for the past several weeks, which was what enabled me to get any work done.
Today:
Last night I got 8 hours of sleep, which was a relief. I’m still in a little pain from my IBS, and I’m a little worried I won’t be able to get much work done today, but I feel a little less tired.
I started off with 1 hour of Japanese study. (I managed to do some Japanese study during the past month, although not consistently every day, so I built up a bit of a backlog of flashcards to review. Since I’m behind, I did as much as I could in an hour and stopped there.)
I also did my Bible reading and Surrender Statement, and that seemed to help me refocus my mind and calm my heart.
The only part of “clearing the decks” that I didn’t do today was house chores, but I’ve been slacking off a bit on that this past month since I’ve been feeling poorly.
Next I'll get back into book 4 of my Lady Wynwood’s Spies series. I had been in the middle of blocking scenes, so I’ll read through my blocking notes again to get back into the story, then continue blocking. Since my IBS is still acting up a little, and since I’ve been sick for so long, I’ll only aim for a few hours of writing work today and not try to push myself.
***
I thought I would simply be reading through my old blocking notes and then continuing, but I added to one scene some necessary things I had missed earlier, and then found a slight change I needed to make for one character’s spiritual arc. It ended up making the spiritual arc much stronger, so I’m happy about that, but it also requires me to rework the ending of this scene, which is tough. I still haven’t finished because my IBS started flaring up, so I decided to stop for a late lunch.
I’m not sure if I’ll get back to work after lunch. It depends on how I feel (physically).
***
After lunch, my IBS is still bothering me, so I’m going to stop here for the day. It’s not bad, I managed to work for almost 4 hours despite not feeling great.
Outlining: time spent: 0
Blocking: time spent: 3 hours, 45 minutes
Editing: Time spent: 0
Writing: Time spent: 0
Writing: Total number of words: n/a
Writing: Overall writing speed: n/a
Time spent doing other writing-related business: 15 minutes
My takeaway for today: It’s not just the discomfort and pain from the IBS that makes it hard to work, it’s also the fatigue and fuzzy brain.
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