I work at home, which is ideal for me since I am recovering from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. I don't expend an hour or more of energy getting ready to face the world and get to work. That would leave me ready to collapse before I even started work.
I can take breaks when I need to. The vast majority of my interactions with other people in a workday are via email which means I can space things out so ... things don't space me out.
I've known for a long time that I wouldn't make it through a part-time shift in a store or office without flubbing the job and ultimately crashing in classic CFS fashion. Probably before the end of the first week of such a misbegotten attempt.
Working at home, I don't have two or three people talking to me at a time, no ringing phones competing with someone impatiently waiting at the cash register. No small-talk and chatter accosting my ears and CFS brain at a time when I can't process. No counting back change or filling out refund or return slips.
No loud muzak in the background that would inevitably end up in my foreground, clouding my brain and tipping my delicate (im)balance with vertigo.
I wouldn't be able to handle walking about a store or standing at a counter for more than an hour or so before I'd need to lie down. I would need a personal assistant for the constant forgetfulness and confusion, or to fill in for me when I needed to take a wee cat nap.
See how well that would work?
But even though I couldn't go out and work in any situation I've been able to think of, for even a few hours at a time a few times a week, I am able to type my brains out for hours without flagging.
Well. Without flagging much. And then there are those breaks through the day I mentioned earlier.
But it's only recently that I realized one other -- very important -- reason that I can work fulltime online. And that is because of the nature of computers and the internet, and email.
My memory is bad. I know, you're sitting there nodding and saying how yours is bad too. But really. Mine is unconscionable.
Doesn't matter if it's something I really want to remember. Thanks to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, my short-term memory deletes every few minutes, without saving.
But bless the internet, everything I say, everything that is said to me, every plan that I have, and everything that I have done, leaves a virtual footprint on a website, in a forum, or in an email. I have worked out methods of remembering what I don't remember with CFS idiot notes everywhere.
I plant my idiot notes in the middle of the page I'm working on because I can't remember long enough to flip from one page to another. I have a filing system that can pinpoint anything I've said to anyone in the last two years online.
And that is why you can read these words that I've written. That is why I can be here at all. Thanks, internet.
I spent 15 years losing the battle against Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Four years ago, I found treatment that worked for me, and now I am making a comeback.