Day in the Life of a Chronically Ill Business Owner
what's it like being chronically ill neurodivergent and an entrepreneur I'm gonna take you with me for a couple of days in my life day one is super unstructured whereas day two has a lot more structure who am I to do this video hi I'm Cassie winter I'm a productivity expert and life coach for neurodivergent spoonies and I'm a neurodivergent spoonie myself let's get started shall we welcome to day one it is December 1st 2022. and uh I don't wanna my first alarm went off um almost half an hour ago so my second alarm is nine usually I spend the half hour in between those alarms trying to rest some more but as today is unique and it's a day in the life uh I've been ruminating endlessly on uh what to do get all my filming and the things in particular I want to say in this first video and uh so not restful and um just really quick distinction it's not like the healthy planning ruminating is just endless anxious thought Loops that you can't escape it's it's not restful it's not fun I mean sure I got some planning done but not in a healthy way my brain is so helpful yay anyways next step is to do the first part of my morning routine which is just me laying here I I've already adjusted my bed so my head is up a little bit and uh yeah as I talked about in my morning routine videos like my first thing is always to just like let my brain and body kind of boot up before I stand up so I always give myself about a half hour to just like kind of lie here setting up a little bit um and do some kind of mindless stuff on my phone to let my body do its thing let my brain do its thing can you tell it hasn't booted up yet I'm just like anyways it's been about 10 minutes and my brain feels more alive and I suddenly remembered something that in my ruminating ruminating what is that pronunciation in my ruminating that I realized I wanted to talk about which was um I had an icky dream last night so with my extensive history of trauma I have a tendency towards unpleasant dreams a lot of the times they're full-on nightmares um thankfully I didn't have one last night but I did have a icky anxiety inducing dream last night so that's what I was coming out of that certainly didn't help um this probably one of the reasons why I shifted into ruminating so hard so anyways talk to you soon first win of the day achieved I changed positions it's very exciting but I'm checking in to let you know my partner just came to visit me and say hi I asked them to adjust my tripod for me so I could film for today so I had been using my um nice tripod to actually hold one of my filming lights in a overhead position over my sewing table to make it easier for me to see it's actually something he set up for me a while back it's been great but I wow yep still morning brain that means uh for me to continue filming today I would have needed to swap out uh the light for my phone holding attachment to do time lapse filming and stuff and that was one thing I was gonna be like all right y'all I'm spending Spoons on it but genius that I am I realized oh I could ask for help one of the things that's a big struggle with brain fog in particular whether your brain fog is from chronic illness or something else going on is that Simple Solutions or even just like basic understanding of what's going on for you and what would help is hard so um still booting up but I'm excited that I had the presence of mind at this point to ask for help and that's going to make the rest of my day easier because I won't have to spend spoons standing up doing that as part of my morning and that's going to help a lot so excited it is time to get up as stated before I done wanna huh all right what's the plan um the next part of my morning routine is pretty straightforward it's time for me to feed the cats because I'm in charge of breakfast my partner is in charge of dinner before bed and uh I want to get the camera set up so you can watch me do my morning chore um which is always part of my morning routine um and yeah I'm hoping that filming that won't interrupt my ability to listen to a podcast while I do stuff because I find that helpful for my morning but anyways catch you in the next shot all right cats are in the process of being fed I have been up for I don't know 10 minutes and my my heart rate is kind of going in between 100 and 110. which is I think to be expected is interesting so the way my pots postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome wow brain fart uh how that works for me is if my heart doesn't get tachycardic enough I get kind of faint and lightheaded because essentially my brain isn't getting enough blood um so well tachycardia sucks my brain tends to be a little bit happier when my heart rate is like north of 110. so it kind of explains what I'm feeling why I'm feeling a bit well right now uh yeah yeah okay what am I doing next what am I doing next I am looking at my cute cat goodness he's done with his breakfast now I need to put it on the floor so she can have breakfast long story short what no that's the brain fog I should probably start moving I've been standing in one place okay so I'm going to attach my phone to the tripod and then film myself doing some chores oh I'm not gonna be able to listen to my podcasts while I film that's really dumb all right time to ask my partner for more help see if he's willing to set up the DSLR for me I don't I don't think I can morning without something to listen to but I need that simulation so uh here we go so my partner was kind enough to help me set up the DSLR on my tripod instead thank goodness it's all set up now oh but that was a a lot of standing to get that done and usually by this time in my morning routine I'm I'm like done standing and I can sit and eat breakfast so I haven't made breakfast but I definitely need to sit see how's my heart rate doing oh yeah it's uh it's around 79 right now and um like it's really nice not being a super tachycardic because that's like a really uncomfortable look at my chest but like not having enough blood to the brightness hard and I'm out of breath because that was like low cardio for 15 minutes being up so uh the reason why I'm documenting all of this is because this is part of my work day today like I need to film this video for YouTube and I kind of see that the point of A Day in the Life as a neurodivergent speedy business owner is like really seeing behind the scenes and like how much I'm struggling and I know that there are spoonies and neurodivergent individuals out there who have significantly more support needs than I do but I also don't want to devalue or undersell how much I struggle on a day-to-day basis and that's why I'm doing this some other things that are going on with me for context is two days ago I did way too much like holy cow wait too much and I'm still recovering from that and uh what else is going on oh yeah ever since I got out of bed I've noticed I have a bit of a sore throat but it's pretty obvious to me that it's a I had reflux last night sore throat and so my my throat's just kind of burned and uh what that tells me is that I didn't have the head of my bed raised enough last night to prevent that from happening which oops my bad uh will be doing that tonight um yeah yeah I'm I'm shaky from being super potsy as you can tell my brain barely has two brain cells to rub together so I'm gonna sit here and sip some electrolyte water for a few minutes gather my wits about me and proceed with their hello this is voice over Cassie from December 20th so the distant future for the Cassie you see on screen and and the one week old passed from when this video comes out anyways you are watching me unload the clean dishwasher and as most people know things are still a little bit wet so I've got Mattel to dry things off my heart rate was around 100 here didn't feel good bending over and standing up over and over and over again as a posse not fun super not a fan hopefully this is a little bit more visually stimulating than uh the majority of the content for this video and I apologize this video today is a long one oh hey look heart rate's 101 again but I really wanted to make sure that I was showing everything that goes into a day in the life of a neurodivergent spooty business owner because if I just showed you me doing work that would be really boring and not demonstrative of how just existing in a chronically ill body with a neurodivergent mind is a lot of work anyways I'm making my morning smoothie right now it's basically half a cup of uh quick oats tablespoon of dark cocoa powder oh there's me having a brain fart a handful of dark chocolate chips and a small portion of white chocolate chips and then a third of a cup of cottage cheese and 1 and 1 3 cup milk blitzed into Oblivion and then this is me practicing dancing It sped up so much you can't really see quality of movement but whenever I have like a couple of minutes um in the kitchen or I'm just waiting for something to happen I usually either do a few drills to practice dancing or I do a PT exercise I've got a dynaband hooked into the door jamb of the larger door to the right of the screen so I can do my PT exercises for my knees here I am doing some more practicing working on something called directional intent right now and it's basically dusting off the cobwebs of distant me Jazz Cassie to bring that old technique into my partner dancing technique and this is me cleaning up so excited it's almost time for breakfast my breakfast is ready I am so excited and also uh taking off my headphones just now I just realized that when my headphones are attached to my phone he uses the headphone microphone which is terrible so I apologize if some of those videos sounded awful I hope I can fix them in post I'm out of breath from doing all of that let's see if my heart rate is coming down at all oh yeah it's like it's now down to 87. I feel icky and out of spoons so I'm gonna enjoy my breakfast now and I will see you soon so I have finished my morning smoothie I am so out of it so usually by this time in my morning routine I my brain feels ready for the day but I don't think my brain is really going to get up and running today um but I still got a lot to do so when we I'm also experiencing that post eating potsiness oh apparently my cat has gone to aggressively visit my partner so that's my partner saying hi to my cat if you can hear it anyways where was I yeah so even though I had a liquid breakfast which helps mitigate this problem it's like sitting like a lump of coal in my stomach and I can tell that all of my blood is going to my stomach to do the digesting so I feel my head feels like I'm still standing up it's a little bit worse actually it's it's fantastic so I think I'm gonna let myself sit here for a little while longer um and then proceed with my work day all right I have filmed a quick tick tock of something that came up on a group coaching call yesterday that I really wanted to share something really important to understand about the concepts of body doubling and co-working if those are something you need in order to do things in order to have successful task initiation and follow through that is okay it is morally neutral to need body doubling and co-working this is something that came up on a call a group call with my clients yesterday and I just thought it was really important to share with all of you and now it's goodness my first video I filmed at around 10 30 a.m it is now 12 46 P.M as you can tell my morning routine took a lot longer today for two reasons a I'm really potsy so not doing too good and also the added task of filming my day is costing me more spoons so hmm I'm finally at the point I usually get to where I am now um uh where I'm looking at my notion dashboard to see what's on my plate for the day I usually get to this point by noon so I'm very I'm like I'm late today but I work for myself so I'm not in trouble what I'm going to do next is basically go through my morning check-in morning um and see what's on my plate uh and then I'm going to take you with me while I time block the rest of the day so that's what's next all right here we are unique situation today I'm working in the living room instead of from bed because I plan on washing my sheets today and it's just not worth the work of like working in there for part of the day then moving out here so I can do my sheets this is a whole deal so um normally I'm in there but today I'm out here and that means I don't have my big whiteboard time block on so I'm going to be time blocking in Google Calendar and I thought I'd be easier to show for all of you too and I can do it well seated very exciting today is a unique day in that I don't have anything actually scheduled usually I have at least one if not more zoom calls scheduled in a day that I need to work around but today I got nada nothing and that is both a blessing and a curse because it's nice to just have the whole day free and that's in part why I'm doing my filming a life in the day today because I have all of this time to let that process take as long as it needs to and it is now one o'clock usually I get to this point in my day by noon my morning routine tends to take me about an hour to an hour and a half depending on what tour I do and how much recovery time I need from any stage in my morning routine so I have just spent time going through my notion dashboard to see what's on my plate for today and I also checked in with my private Discord community that I love so much and it's so motivating to just go in and see people showing up for themselves showing up messy and in particular I love checking in on the text co-working Channel um because I have clients from all over the world so some people are nearing the end of their day right now and there's this whole thread of people co-working and guiding themselves through their day and I'm just so proud of them I adore them all so much and I created this community to create this sense for my clients that like oh I'm not alone this is hard and that's okay it's okay to Pace myself it's okay to need support but like it helps me too it is so motivating to go in there and see that so I I'm kind of riding high off of checking in there I love it so much but now it is time for me to time block my day so no structure I have to create the structure for myself you all know how hard that is it has taken me years to get to a point where I can do this for myself it's taken a lot of practice uh but let me show you my thought process real quick first of all I'm going to block in what we've already done so do do this was my morning routine now we're at one o'clock I have kind of one big thing that I need to do today and that is call and fix something that was a mistake on my 2023 healthcare.gov application
really frustrating I'm gonna give myself like an hour for that and that's probably something I'm gonna do first and since it's kind of like an ambiguous thing I'm gonna block it in first um usually I block in breaks first but I figure I'm just gonna play my break by ear if the uh the call takes forever I'll take a break right afterwards if it doesn't take forever I'll probably end up moving things around but let's just say this hour right here all healthcare.gov and let's make it a different color let's make it gray because it's true yeah [Music] so I'm gonna put in a break right here let's change that color to Lavender [Music] okay and then I think this rest of it is just going to be my afternoon chunk and I've got a lot of little things I have to create a pull uh to schedule with my clients my end of year review Workshop and I have a message I have to do um in my role as a dance teacher and I also have to write a YouTube script for the previous video this is where time traveling comes in so the video you all saw two weeks ago even though for me it comes out two weeks from now I need to write the script for that video so I can film it this weekend and um I should also write the official intro outro to this video so I've got lots of like Little Things to do and then writing that one big YouTube script so this is just going to be pomodoros to get through my to-do list so that's what I'm going to call it so this is my day you can look in my past time blocking videos and I even have a tick tock recently the way I time block is usually a very simple process first of all I put down whatever is actually scheduled for that day so if I already have zoom calls appointments that kind of thing that goes on the time block first the second thing I time block is my breaks because usually um when I have a schedule of calls finding when I need to be taking breaks is the next most important thing so I put that in next and then I fill in the nooks and crannies with time for specific tasks yeah that's what I do and then usually things change as I go so like my idea of how this day was gonna go was very different when I woke up than it is now because my morning routine being out of spoons and having to also film this video today made my morning routine run an hour longer than normal so I'm playing it by here we're running fast and loose today but this is the plan so far wish me luck on my phone call I'll probably also be on hold for a while so I'll see if I can get any of my little things done while I'm on hold wish me luck y'all it was a miracle I wasn't on hold at all and the person I talked to with healthcare.gov was so helpful and we just got it done it was like less than 10 minute call like what that's incredible so now I'm gonna spend the rest of the time that I time blocked actually finishing uh the process of applying for insurance for 2023 because they offered to help me with that but I was like I think I could do the rest of my own I will just call back if I need help so um here I go actually this reminds me of something that I should talk about health insurance as a chronically ill individual is so um up until um January 1st of 2023 I will have been on uh care Oregon Medicaid for goodness ever since I had access to it so I think over five years at this point and that's because I qualified for it so my income was below poverty level because that's essentially what needs to be the case in order to have free health insurance and what's been interesting is this past year because of this business I now make well over that which is wonderful but it now means that I have to pay for my own insurance but because of the pandemic Oregon has actually had a wonderful policy where they won't kick anyone off of Medicaid just because their income has increased it's a really wonderful policy on Oregon's party and I really applaud them for that that being said they don't make it easy to escape so I need to change Insurance in order to move forward with a very particular um medical thing that I need to do there's a surgery I need and it's probably going to happen out of state and there's no way I could have done that with Medicaid essentially so I wanted to change Insurance earlier this year because I could like afford better and like move forward with my medical stuff but they wouldn't let me and I was like wait wait wait wait so it you're just you're just holding on to me and I was told that the only time I could change it was open enrollment and so it is now a period of open enrollment when this video comes out it will have closed because I think it closes on December 15th but uh oh it's been a process trying to figure this out there was this little button there's a little check box in the healthcare.gov application that was like do you qualify for Medicaid and I'm like this is probably just my autistic brain making things way too complicated but I'm like well if I applied right now no but I also have it right now because they're not kicking anybody off so which is it it turns out if if I were to apply right now I would be denied Medicaid that's the answer I go with I do not currently qualify for Medicaid if I were to apply right now so when I first filled out the application I had checked that box yes I do apply but that meant at the end of the day I got no tax subsidies whatsoever for different health insurance and I'm like well that's that's not good I do need some subsidies I'm not making that much money so that's what I was getting help with because you can't go back and uncheck that box yourself online you need help from someone so that's what the phone call was I just did ah anyways I'm gonna go pick my plan now we should be black okay so it is now 1 39 and I have knocked over the next two dominoes in my health insurance thing I made that phone call and then I picked a plan on healthcare.gov my next step is to pay for my first month um but I'm waiting to see because of the hiccups I've had along the way I'm waiting for some information to proceed with that so I have added it to my notion to-do list for tomorrow to work on the next Domino so I can now like relax I can worry about it tomorrow and I can move on to something else now I'm we're back in the time blocking calendar because I wanted you to see how I had blocked off a whole hour for this because I thought it was going to be on hold for like at least 30 minutes you know but magically no hold time whatsoever I love it um so I'm going to go ahead and adjust that to be more accurate and what I'm going to do is I'm going to add right here some admin because now I can work on some of the smaller tasks that I have planned for today so I have to create that pull to schedule and I also have to message uh someone in the dance Community about something in my dance teaching life so yeah that's what I'm gonna do now wish me luck y'all look at my cat isn't Kayla stinking precious oh my goodness I love her so much and then here is me trying to get set up and dropping the power cord to my laptop uh I use um a beefy beefy gaming laptop so therefore I can't really get too much uh time on battery alone so this is me going about my work uh somewhere in this sped up time lapse I filmed the uh the time blocking shenanigans that you saw just before this and I'm not going to show you all of this because this is basically an hour or so of me just working in my computer which ironically speaking to you now voice over Cassie doing the same thing in basically the same location but New Sofa we got a new sofa it's very exciting the only thing that's really happening is you can see the light changing outside yeah kind of boring so uh we're gonna jump ahead towards the end it'll get a little bit darker and then we'll move on to you know I'll be telling you about my day some more very glamorous can you tell it's break time I got those two little things done I got the poll created and shared with my community on Discord and I also got the message drafted and sent to the dance Community member who I needed to talk to I am feeling so much better uh than I was really up until just like an hour ago holy cow the last hour has done wonders for um how I feel emotionally today because as as you know I was having a really rough start to the day super potsy really out of spoons lots to do and no spoons to do them with and also that I had had that like really anxiety inducing dream last night and I started my day with like 20 minutes straight of ruminating which ain't great for the mental health [Music] my head is feeling a little clearer and I think that is mainly because I have been sitting for well over an hour straight now that has done wonders for my pots so I'm not gonna get up and do too terribly much during my break I might try to start my laundry uh washing my sheets but that's about it otherwise I'm just going to enjoy myself maybe do some social media some reading watching some YouTube I don't think I'm up to eating anything um because I can still feel my smoothie is sitting in my stomach like there's a reason why I have a liquid breakfast most days is because of my gastroparesis it just doesn't leave my stomach for 5 million years but yeah um mainly like emotionally I'm feeling a lot better I'm like I've done some good work today and uh I'm on track to get all the things done today that I need to get done which is a lot um especially for a low spoon day and it helps that my pots is feeling a little bit better because I've been sitting here for as long as I have and as you've seen from the other video I've had my feet up this whole time so feeling good I I'm excited to move on to my break so I just spent some time watching some dance videos of a student of mine there was a local Jack and Jill competition last night and they got first place uh and they sent me all their videos and are asking for some feedback and I just was on cloud nine watching their videos I know I'm on my break but dancing is fun and meaningful to me and it's a nice change of pace and so now I'm going to film a really quick um bit of feedback for my student classic post dance teaching fainting pose oh I filmed like five minute thing for my dance student but the combination of standing talking and dancing to demonstrate oh that's my come on watch wow I really thought it'd be higher I think it just uh crashed because I'm out of spoons and it can't maintain a tachycardic state so as soon as I lay down it was just like boom anyways I'm gonna proceed with the rest of my break now being supine talk to you soon all right minor miscalculation and an update it is now 317 according to my time blocking I should be getting onto my next batch of work pomodoros but a couple things happened one I realized oh I should probably eat something now and uh so I have reheated some leftovers from last night and uh while it was reheating because I like to do the low and slow method in the microwave so things don't explode while that was going on um I stripped my bed and put all my bedding into the washing machine so that's going and there is some more time left over so I went ahead and loaded the dishwasher you saw me unload it this morning so I've now loaded everything that was on the counter into there not enough to run it but still glad I did that but now of course I am out of breath pots is not fun anything that is not seated or lying down is exercise essentially cardiovascular exercise and even sitting with my feet on the floor is exhausting so I I have my feet up right now I look like a human pretzel there is I'm going to eat I'm not going to rush myself eating because I know that will make me really ill um and then I will get on to my next work session um when I can because it's more important to not hurt myself than it is to get to work since day is a much more flexible today so check in later all right I've finished my lunch I watched a fun Zoe YouTube video while I eat I didn't rush um but I also didn't try to waste the rest of my day either but it is now 3 43 so that took me like essentially an extra half an hour I am going to with the goal of stopping my work day at five um I'm gonna do a little bit of admin and then probably starting at four I'm going to dive into two pomodoros so 25 minutes of work five minutes of rest and it's going to be all writing working on again the last video you saw but the next video I'm filming time travel YouTube Queen talk to you soon and we are back for more computer work more of the same hey look I'm animated I'm on Zoom a little bit in case you haven't seen my uh spoonie desk setup video basically I got lab desk obvious a little light in the corner is uh my zoom light I don't know why it's not on I must uh now I have updated Zoom or something and then I've got my my microphone my partner just screwed that into the lap desk for me the little black wedge in between the light and the microphone is my stream deck lots of fancy buttons and hotkeys and macros and then there's the laptop itself uh got a little USB Port Shenanigans also command stripped to the desk so I only have a couple of cords to plug into the laptop itself if I ever want to take the laptop out and then the webcam I have is the original version of the Elgato FaceCam they now have a new one that's 4K I want it but I'm not gonna buy it but anyway it's more of the same me doing a whole bunch of work I think my head's bopping along because I'm listening to music as I work but anyways all right coming up is one of my favorite parts of working at home my precious Kitty Kayla is back to Snug some more look at her look at how precious she is oh my goodness she sniffed my face she's very thorough oh no she's needing me oh as I speak to you now from voice over land she is also snuggled at my hip right now oh the way she swung her head and squeaked at me oh goodness that's a good snug oh she wants more screeches y'all I am such a cat lady you have no idea also um my recent YouTube obsession is uh the closet historian on YouTube I love her so much if you're into vintage sewing check our Channel out but I find my autistic brain taking on a voiceover mask that is similar to hers I'm not doing it on purpose but can I turn it off no huh oh there we go the zoom lights working I ended up having to implement that because my partner is also neurodivergent and works from home and we tend to interrupt each other a lot and want attention from each other just because it's a form of stimming for us as a couple and uh the problem would be I would be like on a call with a client or it would be a sales call with a potential client and my partner would barge in making cute noises probably a screaming cat in his arms um and that wasn't very professional so we got me a uh availability light that automatically links with my zoom so it's really obvious to him whether or not I'm available for Interruption it's been very handy oh it gets dark doesn't it anyways onward I have come to the end of my day and it is a miracle when my timer went off I was like this close look if I just had 10 more minutes I probably could have finished both of the scripts that I need to have written by this weekend so close but like I talk about in my program and my clients are well aware of I was exercising my stopping muscle so I can finish my day so I only have Mada breaths I just got up and did something real quick and so now I'm sitting down again so potsy wee I only have a couple more things to do I want to get all of the footage from my two cameras onto my computer so all of the footage for today day one is in my computer I don't have to worry about it and I obviously need to finish washing my bedding I think I can move it to the dryer now and then make my bed later but overall I'm really really proud of myself for all that I got done today and as you can see from like an external perspective I only like worked maybe three hours and that's pretty average for me to work on my business for usually two to four hours is the range on an average day every once in a while it's longer if I have a big deadline and I've been flaring more than usual but on average I personally tend to have four to six usable hours a day and on weekdays I try to make two to four of those actual work on my business and uh considering how rough a shape I was in this morning as you saw I'm really proud of everything I got done today and there was a fair amount that I was just dreading emotionally and I had a lot of resistance for and two things really helped well three things really helped with that one my my history of showing up for myself so I trust myself to do hard things when I need to when I choose two another is I had my wonderful Community to co-work with so I was in the text-based co-working channel a lot today hanging out with my clients while they were also getting things done and three the active um filming myself today uh gave me a lot of opportunities to really check in with how I was doing and then make conscious choices about how to proceed in a self-compassionate way I always do better when I'm able to do that and today the structure of filming my day really helped me do that a lot more than I probably would have been able to otherwise on a rough day like today um which is something I'm going to be reflecting on going forward but uh yeah I'm going to let myself just move videos to my computer finish my bedding and uh enjoy my evening I will not be cooking do not have the spoons for that so we'll be snacking on ready-made food or frozen meals that we've got around here and uh probably gonna be doing super super duper low spoon required activities like watching stuff or playing a computer game I do have a sewing project I want to make progress on but I doubt I'll work on that tonight I really need to let myself rest but anyways that was day one super unstructured day I'll catch you in a few days I think next Tuesday is when I'm going to film my next one which is more structured day so I will see you then thanks for coming with me today bye so that was a super unstructured day in my life before we move on to a more structured day I'm curious what are your biggest struggles on unstructured days like that let me know in the comments welcome to day two uh it was a rough night last night on a scale of one to ten one being a great night's sleep and 10 being no sleep at all Plus a horrible pain it's like a five right there it's a magnab in the middle it took me forever to fall asleep and then I wasn't able to like stay asleep or kept waking up over and over and over again my brain is going wild and then uh no position was comfortable enough to relax it was uh have a rough time anyways I'm going to proceed with the braid booting up portion of my morning routine and I will see you soon to add insult to injury the moment I set up the ACT of sitting up launched so much bile up my throat and into my mouth my entire throat and back of my mouth are now burned so it feels terrible bye we are back for some morning routine shenanigans the day before I was unloading a clean dishwasher today loading a dirty one yet again the constant bending over and standing up not fun but what you gonna do it needs to happen and the hand washing dishes is absolutely out of the question for me because pots add pain being a tall person in a standard kitchen you see how low the counter is like it's below my hips bending over a counter to do stuff not good so the few items that we have that need to be hand washed I make my partner do that because I simply cannot it's interesting watching this back it occurs to me it might be wise on mornings where I feel like I just need a little extra boost to get through this my inhaler film yourself doing stuff you'll discover things making a different breakfast this morning just some simple oatmeal um instead of using a whole bunch of sugar I just used some dark chocolate chips and peanut butter and it's quite tasty I remember that okay I was so foggy that I thought I had heated up the oatmeal in the microwave right but I had set the timer so a minute and 40 seconds goes by I opened the microwave and it still looks just like uncooked oatmeal with water in it and oh boy so of course try again as they say it's like the equivalent of putting the cereal in the fridge and the milk in the pantry am I right do this kind of stuff all the time so for this day actually working in the bedroom so making my bed getting it all ready I use that uh nuzzy weighted blanket as a backdrop because by purple sheets against like the red wall background is a bit aggressive for being on a zoom call I just don't like it aesthetically so um I add the nuzzy blanket it's more neutral color to have as a background when I'm on Zoom calls here I am doing my PT exercises that are mostly uh like they're for the whole hip to feet kind of situation but it's mainly to help with my uh bad knees I am out of cartilage and my patellas don't track properly so uh not fun and uh wasn't actually able to get surgery because of insurance Shenanigans which is frustrating and it forced me down the PT path but luckily PT has been helping a lot so I'm helping to avoid surgery for a little while longer in my life I know I will need it at some point because y'all with ehlers-danlos syndrome you know if you are an active person as I am a dancer it beats up your joints all right breakfast I had forgotten my phone of course so here I am popping into bed my heart rate still high awesome the irony of watching myself be super potsy while I voice over Cassie am here also being potsy my feet are up but my body is hating that I had anything to eat for breakfast and tachycardic it's a good time that was sarcasm if you couldn't tell I still find myself slipping into closet historian style voice over and again it is outside of my control I love her do I have any personality of my own nobody knows so while I eat breakfast I I don't work because like I need to take my time eating like many other spooties I have a fair amount of vitamins that I take with my with my breakfast I know other spoonies take significantly more than I do and I used to be one of those Moonies but I simply cannot pull that off anymore so I've got it narrowed down to magnesium vitamin C vitamin D and methylated B vitamins and those methylated B vitamins have helped me so much ever since I learned that I can't metabolize normal B vitamins thanks to more wonky genetics switching to a methylated B vitamin made a huge difference to me a few years ago this is my precious Kayla she wants me to sit cross-legged so she can snuggle me all right all right here you go oh thanks sweetie oh yeah and down well I guess I'm going to go over there today I mean ah yeah I'll Screech you I mean that that was the plan because on day one I showed you time blocking on Google Calendar but um I have been chosen and my heart rate is still 94 privity I've been sitting here for how long like 20 minutes oh okay I'll give you some more hi yes okay so oh goodness so um and I'm probably gonna have to have my partner come in here and turn on that camera so you can co-work with me you can go check out my like full bedroom office set up in the card that was above just now but oh my goodness isn't Kayla adorable she is such a princess and she is so cute see told you crazy cat lady and earlier I didn't mention it but while I was doing my PT exercises on this day two morning you could see my other cat Oreo the the black and white tuxedo cat um hanging out he likes to help me with those exercises it's really adorable looks like I'm on yet another Zoom call my life is basically computer work and zoom calls that is the business I have built for myself there's no other way honestly with my very low capacity that that's what I gotta do uh if I'm gonna be an entrepreneur and uh really proud of myself for building my business the way I have over the past several years because oh man it's it fits into my capacity as it grows I continue to have to make adjustments to fit it into my capacity like right now I'm finding myself stretched a bit too thin so uh looking forward to a bit of vacation I'm gonna give myself in February very excited about that but um yeah more computer work it never ends and if you're curious about the uh purple stuffed animal to the right on the bed next to mine that is a moon pal a weighted stuffy and I love it well here we are again due to aforementioned cat snuggling we're time blocking in Google Calendar again today but also yeah my my heart rate oh she's it's a 99. it's a hundred it's 99 again it's Bad News Bears today so I appreciate not standing up mm-hmm so what has happened so far basically did my morning routine here and this is what I'm talking about a more structured day so um I have two things scheduled today uh nerdy West Coast Swing prep that's my uh weekly meeting with my dance teaching partner for our online content that we do it's called nerdy West Coast Swing uh usually that meeting is anywhere from one to two hours long and then usually we socialize a little bit afterwards uh this gray thing here isn't something I participate in um I call my uh clients in my program Muses so this is their museled co-working there's one scheduled every day of the week and then but I am hosting a workshop in cool a workshop and call uh for my clients at five so as you can see if I want to just like be done at the end of that call I don't have much time today so and the other thing is because of how exhausted I am if I want to be alive and do a good job for my clients at five o'clock I need to do as little as possible between now and then and I'm already tired from my morning routine pots sucks why did I right click anyways no one of those days and yes my throat still Burns from the bile and that was an hour and a half ago awesome okay let me think this through I basically have two hours to play with less than two hours because as you can see by this red line it is noon right now I cannot spend all of that time working I mean in an ideal world based on how I'm feeling I wouldn't do any work between now and two o'clock for my meeting but that uh I think this is one of those days where pushing myself just a tiny bit is important so here's what I'm gonna do rule number one of time blocking is to put all your actual scheduled things and because we're in Google Calendar they're already done for me second thing is to put in breaks first so I'm gonna make one to two my break and I'm gonna change the color of it so it's really easy to distinguish and this time between noon and one is going to be admin so I'm going to be catching up with my Discord community checking my notion system making sure I'm on top of things checking my email that kind of stuff that shouldn't take more than like 15 minutes and then I will re-evaluate and see how many spoons I have um because the next thing that is on the docket today I'm pretty sure is uh video editing for YouTube foreign so that's that's me time blocking my day and this is why I wanted to show you all more structured day because when I have existing meetings it really cuts down my ability to fit work in between the cracks in a way that doesn't exacerbate my chronic illness or um creates a point of diminishing returns for um my brain fog my executive dysfunction that kind of stuff so I have come to a point where I understand that this next hour it's possible for me to do some work it's not going to be a lot I'm not going to like move the needle a whole bunch but it'll be just a little bit and I know that little bit will make a huge difference to Future me like the rest of this week me so yeah that be the time blocking and now onward to all the admin I was referring to earlier wish me luck y'all it's just never ending computer work I don't want you to have to sit through too much of this so let's just skip it huh all right I managed to do all my admin and uh then I did video editing and just posted my updated YouTube channel trailer to my channel and got that set up as my like when you come to my channel page for the first time that's the first video that starts playing I always find it really annoying to make a channel trailer you have to like officially publish it so anybody who subscribed to my channel will get like a notification about that video and it's so annoying I wish I could have it unlisted and then set it as my channel trailer that would be nice um but I can't ah so anyways I now get to have a break it's 108 right now I now get to have a break until two the main thing I need to do is get up out of bed because this is where I'm going to be sitting for my two Zoom meetings at the end of the day and I want to like not be here in this position all day unfortunately that means that I have to unsnug my cat how am I supposed to unstuck it it's gonna get mad at me wish me luck I have successfully removed my lab desk from my lap but this is what's left desk cat hi oh you are both the best part of my day and the most tiresome they love you you silly thing more very very important cat content Can't Get Enough oh she's so needy can you trip for the voice over Kayla because you're right here no you're too curled up oh goodness you're cute double dose of cute but again I'm not gonna make you sit through all of this because that's cruel and unusual so I just finished my meeting with my dance teaching partner it is about an hour long and thankfully we didn't have too much official stuff to do today just kind of like a little little bits and Bobs here and there which was nice because um my dance teaching partner also has pots and EDS so I'm on days like today we're really kind to each other and we take it easy and um we ended up just watching a few videos from an event and enjoying watching those and talking about with each other because there's a reason why our brand is called nerdy West Coast Swing we are huge nerds and we love watching and analyzing videos we we do it even when it's not foolish on YouTube anyways it is now about 3 P.M
and I have two hours until my workshop and call with my clients in an Ideal World I would love to be able to spend these next two hours working on next week's YouTube video but if I'm gonna really show up and be there for my clients I I need to save myself for it because that's how foggy I am today so I'm probably going to go back out to the living room I once again have to excise myself from my snuggly cat um relax and the gray matter very much for the next couple of hours so that's what I'll be up to talk to you soon welcome to my living room sofa I've been out here I don't know in minutes or so um and I've started ruminating again and I thought I would share because getting to a place in my life and my business where I can take two hours like this to rest and purposefully not do anything so that I can have all my faculties about me to coach my clients it's been a long road to get here and I still struggle with it because all of the old messaging that I'm just being lazy that I'm not doing enough like all of that messaging is still in here I'm still healing from it and I still struggle with it a lot and so when I give myself time off on purpose I come up against those and so I've basically been coaching myself through it and reminding myself that I'm not lazy I'm disabled that's really important there is a reason why I have so much less capacity than an able-bodied neurotypical mentally healthy person and then the other thing that's hard about those thoughts is they make me question am I really this tired or is this just the depression today and first of all that kind of black and white thinking is very indicative of my autism um and I know it's a negative of other forms of neurotiversions as well but it it's not one or the other it's a gray area it's an and and if I really think back through everything I did last week I did so much last week and uh technically Sunday was a working day for me because I had to do a whole bunch of filming um and yesterday I started taking it easier and so basically this week I'm recovering from last week so I have purposely put Less on my plate this week in order to recover and to be able to do more things in the future but when we come back to this moment it's it's like an old dirt road that's had like wheel ruts ground into it over a century the wheel rats are so deep for my thinking to be like you're lazy you're not doing enough therefore depression it's really hard to drive outside of those wheel Reds in my brain so logically I know I have every right to the rest I am taking right now and furthermore like you don't have to earn rest like you're we're humans we deserve rest regardless of whether we've earned it by capitalist standards or anything like that and in this case even though I don't need to have earned it I technically have I and it's not so much that I've earned it it's like I have gotten to a point where I need it the breast has become a non-negotiable for me but that doesn't make the depression thinking go away so it's hard for me to enjoy this time hopefully through talking to you all about it usually I do all of this inside my own head like talking to myself coaching myself through these moments I'm not usually talking to a camera but hopefully through this conversation with myself and with you today um my rest will be restful and enjoyable I'll do my best I know I'm going to be struggling with those those false beliefs and that depression rut in the road of my mind that's not going away I'm gonna do my best and I'm gonna enjoy myself the best I can all right my break is over it is time for me to move back into the bedroom to host my workshopping haul with my clients in my program the action Navigator once again my cat Kayla has stuck me to my spot it's so bad the life of a cat Mom right alrighty last work session of the day here we go putting my bed back into the upright position closing the curtains getting ready to coach my amazing amazing clients in my program the action Navigator I call them muses I love them all so much I I pinch myself this is what I do this is what I do I help amazing people and I get to talk to amazing people every single day like how did I do this I I it doesn't seem real like I think back to my um Groundhog Day uh video that I did over a year ago describing my never-ending Groundhog Day in life basically College burnt me out so bad um and I still was undiagnosed with my chronic illnesses but still very chronically ill and I just spent almost a decade of my life just on the sofa all day every day uh doing quote-unquote nothing productive with my life and being super duper depressed and getting out of that on my own was well it was awful and it took me forever because like there wasn't help out there for what I needed like I would go to therapy every week but it would just be me going talking and being sad for an hour every week and then going home and like what do I do now how do I actually do life different how do I change my behavior and like I had tried cognitive behavioral therapy I tried act the next thing I was going to try was dialectical behavioral therapy but like my insurance wasn't going to cover that and so that wasn't an option for me like what I needed didn't exist and so now that I'm on the other side of it and I hardly recognize myself it's it's Bonkers people that's why I do what I do because I want to be that source for those who are struggling the way I was struggling because doing that alone without support let alone without like expert support is so hard and awful and miserable and you don't have to do it alone and you can get help that's what I do that's why I'm here and um I'm so grateful that I can do this it is so fulfilling and so meaningful and even though I still deal with the spicy sads because that's that's never going away for me um they the spicy sads it's not a 24 7 thing anymore uh it comes in waves but I now have something really meaningful to help pull me out of it and that is you my precious muses because it is my mission to support all of you so thank you um thank you for letting me do what I do so I just finished my coaching call with my clients I went about exactly an hour and it was so wonderful I I love my clients so much it was really rejuvenating like I had told you earlier while I was taking a break to be ready for that call I was struggling with those ruts in the road of my brain that say depression depression depression so many false beliefs come up from being in that headspace and there's like a lot of imposter syndrome feeling bad about myself I mean I I I'm probably I'm probably preaching to the choir you don't need to read and every time I hop on a call with my clients it lights me up even if we're talking about hard things you all are so precious to me and I am so honored that you trust me to help you along this journey so I'm clocking out my work day is over it's been an interesting day had an awful night's sleep like I talked about had a normal morning really didn't have too much time to do work outside of calls because I had a lot of resting to do to be alive for this late call today so in the grand scheme of things I really didn't do too much work today but and this is something that we actually talked about the amount of time that you put in to whatever your work is whether that be working for a job or work that's meaningful to you or both the meaning is not a one-to-one relationship to the time you can get so much meaning out of a short amount of time you can get so much value out of a short amount of time and we neurodivergent spoonies because we have less time energy capacity and often money than those who are able-bodied neurotypical mentally healthy we have to be really intentional with how we spend at precious time and energy and that's why I do what I do I want to empower my my clients to be able to spend their precious time and energy the way they want to and that's entirely easier said than done but when you learn how to do that for yourself your life opens up in ways that you probably never thought was possible for me I know that happened for me when I was doing this for myself back in the day and as I continued to do for myself to continue to grow my life in ways beyond what I thought was possible for me and I have now been doing this work with clients long enough that I see it happening for them and it lights me up inside I'm so proud because I can show the way but they're the ones doing the work and opening their lives up for themselves and anyways I love what I do it's been a roller coaster of a day I love what I do and I really grateful that all of you make it possible for me to do this so thank you talk to you soon as you can see that was a much more structured day and once again I'm curious what are your biggest struggles on a more structured day like that let me know in the comments there you have it two days in the life of a neurodivergent spoonie business owner I hope it was helpful and let me know if you have any questions if you're curious about my coaching the main way I work with clients is through my signature course the action Navigator it's packed to the brim with tools and techniques for mastering your time getting organized and offering yourself radical compassion as a neurospicey spoonie if that sounds like exactly what you've been looking for use the link in the description box below to learn more check out these videos next on my minimalist time blocking setup and my bedroom office if you liked this video hit that like button and subscribe and be sure to share it with your friends P.S for the New Year I'm going to be doing four videos in January leading up to a free workshop at the end of the month make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss it see you then bye
2023-01-03 09:12
