Right now, I feel like life is challenging me with financial pressure, work pressure, and pressure from my inner shadows.
Financial pressure is everywhere, and everyone I know is feeling it on some level. Paying the bills and grocery shopping feels like Tetris sometimes—trying to align the blocks to fit before more blocks (bills) begin to fall. I already know people who are trying to figure out how to work more, myself included. However, I have undiagnosed chronic pain, so for me the question isn’t exactly how can I work more but work more effectively. Along with that, I recently realized that unhelpful coping mechanisms are showing up in how I sell my creative work.
To be honest, my confidence in the worth of my creativity is very low, so I’ve been undercharging for the things I create so I can always feel like I’m overdelivering. But in my pursuit to please others and feel useful, I’m over-giving. I’m giving from what I don’t have. So as a result, I’m under-resourced—left feeling like my work is not receiving the respect it deserves because I’m not giving it the respect it deserves (I share my thoughts on this in more detail in The Listening Room).
So the challenges aren’t only coming from the outside. They’re coming from within as well.
With all of this going on, I’m surprised that I’m not pushing to just figure it all out and hustle through whatever solutions come to mind. Instead I’m doing my best to listen to my body, because I know that if I want to make anything happen at all, I must have my body on my side.
Trying my best to listen to my body
At one point while writing this blog post, I started to feel very sleepy. Part of me wanted to push through. Push through that afternoon slump! But another part of me knew that I went to bed later than I should have last night, and that getting a little more sleep may be better in the long run.
When I have enough sleep, I feel less anxious, and I have better ideas on how to deal with whatever life is throwing at me.
So, I took the nap. And now I’m back. And besides trying to make sure that I get the sleep I need, I also have been taking a closer look at ways I can experiment with improving my income while honoring my chronic pain and the fluctuating energy levels that come with that.
One work day per week
With the combined efforts of suggestions from my husband, online articles, my own imagination, and ChatGPT, I’ve managed to create this “one day of work” that allows me to mine a collection of different income streams in one day. I try to keep it at four different income streams.
Income stream one: Applying for user surveys.
Income stream two: Growing tea plants and creating herbal tea.
Income stream three: Making audio recordings of deeply descriptive scenes from Omnigirl, the novel I’ve been posting lately.
Income stream four: What I mainly do—writing nonfiction.
I am totally unsure if this will work, but it does help me to diversify while honoring the limits of my body. If these things fail, I’ll probably just end up asking people if they know anyone who could hire me to work for one day per week.
Even under the pressure of needing more money, I’m still putting my health first.
Making time for nature
Nature is good for everything. It relieves stress, moves the body, and opens the mind.
When I go for walks in my backyard, I’m reminded of how if I stay aware enough, I can see the ways that life gives back to me just for existing. When I’m in nature, I don’t need to hustle all the time to recieve.
When I walk in my backyard, I find these pretty, sparkly pink rocks that I love collecting. If I’m lucky, I find fresh and ripe dates on the palm trees that I can eat (before the squirrels get them!). There are wild flowers I like to use to create miniature flower arrangements.
And I often find money. It is a bit weird how many coins I’ve found just from walking in my backyard alone. At one point, I asked my husband if he was dropping money on the ground for me to find because it was just so strange, but he insisted that he wasn’t. So, that is a mystery.
But still it feels good randomly finding money when I step out into my yard because each penny and dime is like a little message telling me not to give up and to take small and meaningful steps because everything that I do—no matter how insignificant it may feel right now—will eventually add up to something. To be honest, I feel like this blog post is a little ugly. But it’s also…real. And maybe that’s more important right now.