Low Energy Life Strategies.

I Repeat Myself

I realize I’ve written about this subject before, but I am always fine tuning my thinking about it.

As most people who read my blog already know, I was diagnosed with two auto-immune diseases (ME and Hashimoto’s Disease) and last year had a fight with cancer and shingles.

ME is common in people with Hashimoto’s Disease, but getting diagnosed often takes a decade or more. It’s been a frustrating journey, but the biggest frustrations were exacerbated by my expectations.

I have pretty harsh personal standards re: work ethic and productivity.

My first mistake in dealing with these issues was looking at my peak performance and marking that as “normal”. 

Knowing that I have probably had auto-immune disease my entire adult life, I now know what my normal really is: ups and downs in mood and energy, decade after decade.

High performance for months or even years, then a crash. Highly detailed entries in diaries and calendars, then blank pages for months. I got so used to skipping huge sections in journals and day planners, I’d just pull the pages and reuse them later by changing the dates.

The years I was able to exercise for two hours a day were always preceded by months or even a year or more of poor physical fitness.

I suppose it’s no wonder that autoimmune disease is sometimes misdiagnosed as bipolar disorder. It’s not mental illness at all, but on paper it sure as hell looks like it.

My sputtering endocrine levels gave me periods of high energy and periods of low energy.

I always assumed the low energy and performance was a character flaw, and the high performance evidence of my great drive and work ethic. Those thirty-two-hour work jags, the all-nighters, the cram sessions at the drawing board: perhaps just as much a quirk of my biology as a sign of comic art virtue.

A friend and I had a very long talk about the pure dumb luck that has put us where we are in terms of career success: yet we attribute disease to bad luck.

Being able to draw, and having huge energy reserves to meet deadlines, or work 80 hour weeks is also, in part, luck! You gotta put in that time, energy and study, but having the time and energy…not everyone gets it.

Good luck and bad luck are unearned all the same!

My endocrine specialist informed me that I am simply never going to be as steady as I would hope. Things have evened out a bit since I first started treatment, but there are still down times. Which is a bummer, but that’s the way it is.

Big life changes include:

1) All-nighters, huge work jags, cramming etc: no can do. Every time I try to pull those late night sessions, I am wrecked for a day or two after. Migraines are easily triggered.

No more hard core work jags.

2) Schedule everything as carefully as possible.

One of the funny things about old me is how super-busy I seemed all the time, but being disciplined about fewer things is more productive than juggling many things, which is how I used to live.

Do fewer things better.

3) Dole out energy as the precious resource it is.

Recognize draining activities. These can be as simple as going to a restaurant with friends. One activity outside my art per day is too much. Twice a week is often too much.

4) High maintenance physical tasks, like a garden, cut ‘em back or cut it out entirely.

My farm is now gone. If you CAN exercise, good. But if you’re in a low energy ebb, physical activity will suck the energy you have left for art. 

5) Reduce stress.

Online activity is extremely draining, and now I never hesitate to shut down someone online who is giving me grief. The block button is awesome.

The other day someone chewed me out for writing a post about setting boundaries and managing my stress.

Because to do so is a sign of privilege.

She can suck it.

6) Set easier goals.

Instead of announcing a ten hour work day and then being disappointed when you don’t meet it, shoot for five hours a day of actual art making: it’s still going to end up being an eight-hour work day.

The other three hours will be eaten by email, research, packing and mailing, etc. But art must get done, and by taking it in small bites of a couple of hours, it is easier to handle. An easy goal of 5 hours of ART is more encouraging than making a hard goal of ten hours of WORK, then being disappointed when you don’t meet it, finding the WORK time gets frittered away by ADMIN, and the ART didn’t get done.

Since 5 hours is easy to hit, I usually end up drawing more than that. Working a few hours early in the day, and a few hours in the evening, I end up working over 40 hours a week on drawing alone without too much stress, while getting all my admin work done as well. Baby steps are good.

The funky thing about coming to terms with all this is realizing how much of our happiness in life is dependent on a chemical, how fundamentally unfair "success" and "failure" can be, and how much we attribute to character things that are really out of our control. 

Taking a pill to be the peak performance person I always assumed I was anyway makes me feel a bit manufactured!

Weird world, innit.

Good Omens. Almost finished. Available at Pledge Manager.