My last blog post was now several months ago, and I was talking about how much healthier I have been. One of the questions I posed at that point was, when should I start working?
Well, the cost-of-living crisis rather forced my hand and, fed up with constantly stressing about money, I took the little extra energy I had and tried to build up some sort of income that I could manage with my energy levels. And I have successfully managed to do that (which is why I haven’t had any spare energy to write for my blog)!
Given that October is Disability Employment Month, it seems like an apt time to write a little about my experience of building up an income as someone with an energy-limiting disorder (ME/CFS) and freelancing with a chronic illness.
What I require from a job
With my level of illness, there were a certain number of prerequisites for any job I applied to. At the end of the day, I am in the fortunate position that, although it is tough, I have just about enough money for survival without working and a very supportive network in case of emergency – which means my health can always come first.
Meaning I needed:
- a job I could do from my bed and from home; ideally, something fully remote and flexible, so I could work when I was well enough and at my own pace.
- a job without tight deadlines, so it would be possible to take a week or two off work, easily and at short notice, in case of a big crash.
- a job with a limited number of hours: in the Netherlands, part-time is usually 32 hours, which is significantly more than I can manage. I was initially looking for something more like 5-10 hours a week.
- something that paid enough per hour to make it worth working: many online jobs in English pay an hourly rate as low as £2 to £3 – not worth potentially making myself sick for.
- something that didn’t require endless pitching to new clients, which takes a lot of mental energy that I don’t have.
Obviously, jobs like this are not so easy to come by. And my employment history did not leave me in the best position to apply for jobs, having had a few unexpected bumps in the road due to my ME/CFS.
My Confidence in Freelancing with a Chronic Illness
As someone who got to the age of 27 having been too ill to do more consistent jobs than my high school job as a cleaner, or my six months in a tourist shop in Amsterdam, other than a few odd jobs that came my way, I didn’t have much confidence in my ability to do a job.
I knew next to nothing about the working world, particularly the freelance writing world I was trying to enter. Invoices? Taxes? Pitches? It was a new language to learn.
Also, because I lacked prior work experience, I lacked the validation I might have gained to believe my work was deserving of a fair working wage. Having spent two years producing blog posts for free, the idea of being paid to write similar stuff felt very foreign, and it was easy to undervalue my skills.
Alongside this, although there are a lot of random editing, teaching and writing jobs on my CV, it is still rather empty for someone of my age.
This is something I just had to get over and work on, but, in the beginning, it definitely held me back. And I’m sure many other people who are sick and became sick at a young age have these feelings too. But you can get past them and start freelancing with a chronic illness (if you are well enough).
Where to Find Jobs
So I knew what I wanted and needed, but where exactly do you find these jobs?
From what I had read online, it seemed like endless pitching to new clients and then hoping that one of those clients likes you and keeps you on. And for many people, this is how it works.
However, having already tried that a year before, I know that this uses my energy much more quickly. So instead, I searched in a number of different places:
- digital nomad Facebook groups;
- blogger Facebook groups;
- online remote jobs boards, including: Working Nomads, We Work Remotely ,ProBlogger, and Journo Resources
Whenever I found anything that fitted my needs, whatever it was, I applied and hoped I got somewhere. Whilst there were many, many jobs from which I never got a reply and several that required me to write test pieces that I never got paid for, I did eventually find something that fitted the bill.
Some Tips for Applying Online for Remote Work
One of the things I learnt to be careful about when applying online for remote work was to ensure I ended up getting paid. Some tips I learnt were:
- wherever possible, request a contract of sorts;
- any opportunity that sounds too good to be true, is too good to be true;
- do not do hours of unpaid work;
- make sure to read reviews of the employer where possible (many of the scam jobs out there already have lots of negative reviews online, which come to light with even the tiniest bit of Googling;
- even though you can feel a little despairing at times, just keep applying, and something will come up;
- always oversell yourself… If you don’t, someone else will!
And the last and most important thing about working with (or without) a chronic illness is…
Your Health Always Comes First
If you have an energy-limiting condition such as ME/CFS, pacing is so important. No amount of money is worth putting yourself into a crash – as we all know, crashes are expensive in so, so many ways, so even based on a purely economic argument, it doesn’t make sense.
Make sure to be clear and consistent with your boundaries so that you don’t end up taking on more than you can manage. For me, I started freelancing with a chronic illness very slowly and have built up how much work I can do so that I can keep within my boundaries. I don’t want to have a health crash over something that I could have prevented.
So Where Have I Been?
For those who are wondering where I have been and how I have been: I have been reacquainting myself with the human I used to be, who is up and about rather more. I have managed to secure two more long-term, freelance jobs that fit flexibly around my health and have spent the summer experimenting with some that did not work out or did not fit my needs.
Alongside that, having had a bit more energy has allowed me to do some things that bring me joy, and I have managed to develop a bit more of a social life (albeit still being careful about Covid). I have even taken up comedy improv and had my first performance a couple of weeks ago.
Living life with a bit more energy is such an interesting experience after years of being practically housebound, and I have been intensely grateful for everything I have been able to do. Unfortunately, over the last two weeks, I have succumbed to Covid, so I’m radically resting and keeping my fingers tightly crossed that I can recover relatively quickly. We shall see!
If you enjoyed this blog post, feel free to have a browse of the rest of the blog. If you’d like to receive the new blog posts directly to your inbox, so you don’t miss one, you can join my mailing list here. You can also buy me a coffee through my Ko-Fi page, or if you are interested in receiving regular rewritten disabled fairy tales and other great rewards, you can sign up to be a monthly donor.
