The ongoing pain has forced me to reconfigure my schedule to prioritise the projects that need to get done—like finishing the proposal and producing work for my website and my supporters and subscribers—and to simply say no to anything that does not go towards all that.
See also: “An Update: On Schedules and Moving Forward.”
The short version is that my sciatica/pinched nerve has returned. Sometime last year, I was diagnosed (by a doctor who never actually examined me but surmised everything from a ten-minute conversation) with a pinched nerve in the lower back. Anti-inflammatories took care of it for quite a while, and then it all came roaring back a few weeks ago. This time, the pain is marginally better: where the earlier bouts felt like someone was tearing my leg bones apart from the inside, this time the pain seems more localised in the muscle. It still hurts like hell, and is erratic and unpredictable.
I don’t have the resources—or, frankly, the time and the energy—to try out too many different remedies, so I’m talking to a number of people to see what the best and most effective long-term strategy might be. In the meantime, I’m doing everything I can—my heating pad or hot patches go everywhere with me—to manage the pain, including regular stretches and exercising to keep myself as aligned as possible. I will say, my legs are looking better every day as a result—I just need to get the rest of me to match them. I’m actually very comfortable in my bedroom, which is wicked cute (pics to come), and have surrounded myself with every possible tool to make working from bed and with severe pain comfortable (if you’d like a pdf with a list of said tools, email me and I’ll send it on to you). In my head I look like Joan Crawford in this famous photo. In reality, I’m more like this.
I’ve shifted my schedule and lifestyle significantly to accommodate this new reality (and have gained even more respect for my friends who live with chronic pain!); I’m fortunate that I can do this as someone who works from home. My previous schedule of waking up around 6, reading and walking till 9 and then getting to work for some hours before lunch, has been mercilessly hacked to pieces. Nowadays, I might wake up in a cocoon of pain at, say, 4, and spend what seems like hours but is often perhaps half an hour, furiously massaging the leg, stretching, and applying a heating pad until I get relief. By the time I “wake up,” say around 9, I’m shattered and exhausted and it takes me half the day just to get moving again. For the rest of the day, I work in and out of the pain, taking frequent breaks whenever it strikes. Strangely, for me, this means I sometimes work past midnight—I’m not a night owl, so this is a very odd feeling, to be one, and I’m getting used to it. I’ll admit there’s something about working in the dead of night, when the world has gone to sleep, that is alluring. But I’m often tired, a lot. I drink more coffee than I should and, really, at this point, I don’t think the caffeine even has any effect beyond the first cup—drinking it is more about getting the hot liquid inside me and giving me the illusion that my tired limbs are waking up.
Some days, I have no pain at all. In which case, I try to grab whatever work time I can and read and write furiously.
I’m putting all of this down so that I can send a link to this post whenever I have to explain to someone why I’m mostly retreating from “normal” life for a long while.
And, to be truthful, while the pain hurts, a lot, and I could really do without it, it has also forced me to reevaluate my priorities. For a while now, a very long while, I’ve felt torn in many directions, often asked to do things that are beyond the resources of someone who is barely “making it.” The ongoing pain has forced me to reconfigure my schedule to prioritise the projects that need to get done—like finishing the proposal and producing work for my website and my supporters and subscribers—and to simply say no to anything that does not go towards all that. The Direness (which my friends and supporters know about) also continues, and if I’m to finally break free of it, I have to buckle down and focus on that as well.
So, for the next many months, I’m receding from anything that isn’t directly connected to all that (but not my friends!), and I’m not seeing anyone if they can’t make it to Hyde Park or, at the most, the south loop. I will get to the north side on occasion, for groceries and the best samosas in the world, and my favourite cat-friend besides my own, and her human sibling and caretakers (R, K, and M, much love!), but that will be about it. From here on, I’m not even going to respond to requests that aren’t about paid work. And I’m not going to read other people’s work even if they offer to pay for it, even if they pay a lot. I find that most people imagine that they’re interested in getting feedback on their writing but most of the time what they really mean is, “Would you, a published writer, please look this over and tell me how amazing I am?” Even if they’re open to actual critique, it takes too damn long to set up all the rules of engagement and to mop up the tears shed at the first set of edits, and I’d rather spend all that time on my own work. I’ve already disengaged from social media in the sense that I no longer engage with people just looking for a fight (although I’m still up for interesting conversations…and only “fight” if someone decides to make a particularly ignorant point about gay marriage)—if I think you’re looking for a fight, or have no idea about my politics, I just delete and then even block because, really, I don’t have time for needless troll shit. And I’m not going to explain what my politics are—if you’re friending me on social media, you should do your homework on me. See this, here? It’s an entire website devoted to … me. There’s no excuse for not knowing that I, for instance, am resolutely and uncompromisingly pro-abortion-rights, and against gay marriage, and that I don’t give a rat’s ass about giving you trigger warnings. And so on.
But, moving on.
There are a lot of things I hate about my current situation—the extreme poverty, the precarity, the constant sense that the ground is about to give way under me, the constant fear of even a chipped tooth which might drive me into further penury (what is penury minus broke, I wonder?)—but one of the things I hate most is that I can’t always take care of my friends the way they’ve all taken care of me, and continue to do so. I want to get myself to a place of stability and relative calm so that I can be much more present for my friends, all of whom have been constantly rallying around and supporting me all these years. Things need to change and, damn, if it’s the pain that forces me to think of ways of getting to a better place, where I can be with my friends in more actualised ways, so be it.
See also: “An Update: On Schedules and Moving Forward.”
Don’t plagiarise any of this, in any way. I have used legal resources to punish and prevent plagiarism, and I am ruthless and persistent. I make a point of citing people and publications all the time: it’s not that hard to mention me in your work, and to refuse to do so and simply assimilate my work is plagiarism. You don’t have to agree with me to cite me properly; be an ethical grownup, and don’t make excuses for your plagiarism. Read and memorise “On Plagiarism.” There’s more forthcoming, as I point out in “The Plagiarism Papers.” If you’d like to support me, please donate and/or subscribe, or get me something from my wish list. Thank you.
Image: Shoes, Vincent Van Gogh, 1886