It's a beautiful summer's day, with bright golden sunshine and a warm breeze dancing through the trees. It's one of those days that makes you want to lay in the sun, sprawled out like a lazy cat enjoying the last of the summer heat before the dark season returns. It's a day for Sunday lunches, afternoon snoozing and slow living.
It's just over a year since I left my student job at the veterinary practice and I feel like I have been catching my breath ever since. There is no doubt that the long hours and enforced overtime were having a negative impact on my health and I am not sorry to be free of it. I worked there for four years and I do keep in touch with my friends from the practice, but I made the right decision in leaving. At the time, people often asked me why I was leaving a secure job that could have lasted me a lifetime, in favour of the sporadic income of an author and the answer is simple - it's because working from home is good for my health.
Living with any chronic illness is difficult, but living with, and going out to work with an invisible illness is an uphill struggle on a daily basis. Having Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or M.E means that I simply can't work long hours without triggering the illness. CFS makes you feel like a car that is almost out of petrol, yet is expected to remain fully functional. I need a lot of rest. Simple tasks that are easy for most people, such as vacuuming or changing bed sheets, are more draining for me, using up all my energy reserves, meaning that I need to rest afterwards.
There are certain things that I just can't do anymore. Back in the day, I would go horse riding in the mornings, spend the afternoon writing my daily word count, then go off to a dance class at teatime, followed by an ice-skating class in the evening - all on the same day! I would follow the same routine several times a week. Now I have to limit myself to one activity/outing every two or three days, with recovery days in between. Likewise, cleaning the house from top to bottom in a single day, is a thing of the past. Now I have to pace myself, tackling one room at a time. So you can imagine what 12-14 hour shifts were doing to me, over that four year period! I just couldn't wait to finish the Master's Degree, so I could leave the vets and get back to my writing life.
Sadly, most employers are not sympathetic to workers who are living with such illnesses. They want as much as they can get out of their employees and don't really cut them a lot of slack, even if they have a valid reason for not wanting to work overtime etc. However, if the government wants people to keep working into their late-sixties, this attitude really needs to change and employers will have to be far more accommodating and flexible for people with health issues.
For me, it was always the plan to leave the vets as soon as I could return to my writing again. That was the whole point of doing the MA in the first place. I knew it would boost my opportunities with publishers if I had an MA in Creative Writing under my belt, and it certainly has done just that.
Now I live a much gentler life. It has taken me about a year to reset my routines and mindset and to realize that I don't have to live in a state of high stress anymore. I genuinely believe that it has taken the past twelve months for my body and mind to release all the vet-stress it was holding onto, stress which had accumulated over the four years I worked there. Back then, I only had enough energy for the vet job and the MA. I had no energy left for life - for fun, for adventures however small, for hobbies and activities. I worked and I studied and that's all. Everything else was too much. It's no way to live. Recreation is important for our mental health and well-being.
These days I live a much slower lifestyle, one that is more suited to the CFS and while I do still have some bad days, they are not as frequent or as many. Making a living as a writer means that even on bad days when I need to rest, I can just grab my laptop and still get my work done. This is the advantage of self-employment and working from home as an author. I can rest when I need to, without fear of the boss, because I am the boss! Having that level of autonomy is vital for keeping on top of the illness.
As the CFS seems to have worsened in recent years, whether that is due to the long days at the vets or a natural progression of the illness, I find that the hardest thing is accepting the little losses along the way. Accepting that I now have a limited capacity for activity is hard. I've always been a strong person, but CFS makes me feel weak as a kitten. As much as I would love to exercise five horses in a day, jumping off and un-tacking one, before tacking up and riding off on another, as I did when I worked at the stables, that's just never going to happen again. I do still ride, but I certainly don't leap from one mount to another anymore! I'm happy riding just one horse and then coming home to write.
I have learnt to adapt. I know that if I have a busy day, I will need a recovery day the day after, so I can rest. I'll still be working and meeting my word count, but I won't have the energy for much else. Piano lessons are easier on me than riding, as it is naturally much more sedate. It's a more relaxed activity, but of course, I love both. Horse-riding, writing, music lessons, ice-skating - these are the activities that fulfill me the most and I get a lot from them. They make me who I am.
That said, I have a much richer, fuller life now than I did when I worked at the vets, because writing doesn't take up all my energy, so after I've done working for the day, I still have enough energy leftover to enjoy myself. I go to music school for piano lessons, I go to concerts and ballets in the evenings, I see a film at the cinema or go out for a meal. All of these things were virtually impossible when I was at the vets because I didn't have the energy reserves left over. I would wake up exhausted on my days off, because I'd worked multiple 12 hour shifts. I was giving everything to the job, and I had nothing left over to give to myself. So it made sense to leave that world behind and focus on my writing, which is what I'd planned to do all along.
As summer draws to a close, the dark season is almost upon us and I have lots to look forward to. Having my autonomy back means that I can just book whatever takes my fancy, without consulting a rota or swapping a shift. I can just go wherever the mood takes me, so I have tickets to see the ballet, a concert and an afternoon tea. Autumn is theatre and show season and I intend to enjoy it to the max!
I'll also be heading back to the stables after the summer holidays, so that I can ride all the pretty horses I love. I don't go mad in the saddle these days, but I always enjoy a good gallop through the woods, or making pretty patterns in the sand when schooling and doing flat work. I'm looking forward to being around the horses again and seeing my friends up at the yard.
This autumn and winter will be quite busy work-wise, as I have lots more writing to do and new commissions to work on. My writing timetable is fairly full this year, with several projects to write, on topics both old and new. There are new book titles and another oracle deck dropping from me this autumn, so I am excited to know what peoples' reactions will be once the books are published. I'm going to be exploring various world mythologies and traditional magical practices over the next few months, but that is all I'm allowed to say for now. Needless to say there will be many, many days when I am tucked away in my study, writing new books!
I'll certainly need the holidays I have planned! This year I am heading back up to Scotland, not once, but twice! I'm not going up to the Highlands though. Instead I'm going to explore more of the Lowlands and I can't wait. I find that Scotland is so restorative and the fresh mountain air does me the power of good. I can't quite believe that I have two Scottish holidays booked this autumn and winter, and for the first time ever, I'm taking my mum with me too. We normally go on holidays separately, but as this is a rather special year, we decided to go together. I'm really looking forward to it, as we are going to parts of Scotland I have never visited before. Autumn can't come quick enough for me. And yes I have scheduled in lots of Recovery Days to combat the CFS during all this gallivanting around. I'm just glad that, thanks to working from home, I finally have the energy to have a life!
If you struggle with a chronic illness I hope that this little blog post has helped you to see that you are not alone. Lots of people have health issues that the world cannot see, does not seem to acknowledge and which employers prefer to ignore, but I know that the struggle is real. Try to remember that you are not being lazy or difficult, you are simply trying to cope. Give yourself little things to look forward to, but remember to include time for recovery, as even happy events can be draining.
Love and Blessings
Marie x
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