Today, I have been mostly exhausted. Not because I was up all night writing as it’s the start of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month, to the uninitiated) but because I slept really badly. Family problems and disability discrimination will do that to you.
You see, yesterday, I was discriminated against due to my invisible illnesses. Normally I do a good job at ignoring it, or am better at fighting for my corner. Last night, feeling a bit rough and with painful wrists, I just flaked under pressure and felt awful about it for most of the evening.
However, this morning, before I could even think about starting my novel for this year, I had to write some blog posts instead.
These, I put on my recently started tumblr account. I ended up with a lot to say on the matter, so it ended up being spread across three posts, which is crazy. Anyway, they can be found here:
Visible Disabilities and Discrimination
Invisible Disabilities and Discrimination
Disability and Magic: The Gathering
So yes, as you can see, it went on quite a bit. It was upsetting having my first FNM (Friday Night Magic) in a long while ruined by attitudes like that, but at least I tried to do something productive with my reactions to it.
However, I’ve also been hyper-aware that it is NaNoWriMo and it irritated me that I absolutely definitely had to write those important blog posts when I had a novel to be writing.
This is what I mean about being a spoonie: suffering from chronic illness means almost anything that others can take for granted can be incredible hard work for me, especially if I am having a bad day. Today is a bad day, much worse than usual. It means that to do anything more than flake requires sheer force of will and the desperate hope that I won’t end up paying for it tomorrow.
Still.
Writing my words today was tough. I mean, very tough. My wrists are absolute agony, my shoulders and back don’t feel all that much better. And, having had little more than 4 hours sleep, I am absolutely exhausted. But, I can’t not meet the recommended average on the first day. And then, when I got to the minimum, I was near the end of the first chapter, so I had to finish it. So I kind of did.
I am pleased I managed to ignore the pain as such, or at least, push through it in order to finish chapter one of this year’s NaNo novel. Hopefully, after a good night’s sleep, tomorrow’s writing won’t come quite so difficultly for me. I also need to continue editing my novel and would ideally like to alternate through the day with writing/editing so I get both done at a nice clip.
But really, I just hope that after such a spoon-depleted day for somebody with chronic illness that I have more time and energy for all this tomorrow.
Words Today: 2008
Total Words: 2008
Tracie Writes 