Foovay's Cauldron

Focus for those of us with bipolar disorder, super hyper-active minds, and a range of talents and skills (actually, I think we all have that but we don’t necessarily acknowledge it) coupled with ridiculous amounts of creativity can really be a matter of finding an appropriate way to proportion our attention. Prioritizing is more important, perhaps than trying to accomplish anything like a single minded focus on one project.

I can focus. I can sit down to write a novel in three days and end up with well over thirty thousand words, after all. But then I need to go with the hubby to clinics, help someone else edit and format a novel, spend a couple of hours guiding on chacha, and maybe blog three or four times a week and somewhere down the line I find myself in the forest, surrounded by trees who all seem to be talking to me at once. I seriously need to drop out of a project or three.

There aren’t enough hours in the day to do everything I could do, want to do, would like to do. I have to have some time left to hike, kayak, and play Killer Bunnies with the husband, after all!

Something else that has been bothering me is that I’ve been spending time doing things I used to do – oh sure, with some tweaks – but that quote keeps haunting me.

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Albert Einstein

Okay, I know I am insane (although I maintain that insanity is a relative term) – but do I want to continue beating my head on these same old walls? I’ve been blogging since long before it was cool and my blogging income has ranged about the same for ten years. Zero to maybe twenty bucks a month. Now and then there is a spike and I get all excited, but it dies away soon enough. And don’t even get me started on Squidoo. Those two old things seem to have plateaued off at less than $50 a month – combined – regardless of how many hours I put in. With, of course, the occasional spike that gets me all excited.

For $50 a month I could put in 50 hours at ChaCha – and there is still some hope there that I can move up in the ChaCha world and make more at that. I know someone personally who is making enough to live on from ChaCha guiding. Of course, there are people who claim to make a living blogging, and at Squidoo.

The novella I thought had the least commercial potential,Cutting Away The Pain is continuing it’s quiet trickle of sales, with an occasional return thrown in. I have no clue what’s going on over there, but I do have more in me like that one…

And now and then a freelance opportunity drops in on me out of the blue – like the editing and formatting I am doing for another author now – or illustrating childrens books.

Yesterday, I even had had a sale at Zazzle

Not one of these things is making me enough to live on. I’m in a quandry. What to do, what to do – which tree do I water first? What project really has the potential to make me a living wage while allowing me to work from home and have the freedom to be at the hubby’s beck and call?

One of my Notes From The Universe says no decision is ever “wrong”. But I’ve really got to make one here soon or my head is going to split from whapping it on the wall, or spin off from trying to look in eight hundred directions at once. I’m sure I’ll end up doing more than one thing, and I’ll never turn down any kind of freelance project that means I’ll actually be PAID for my work (that includes toilet swabbing, fence building, and any other odd job that comes my way), but I do think I’m going to have to let a few things die a slow, quiet natural death.

Don’t hate me if I don’t choose your flavor of Internet income? I know people do make a living at blogs, Squidoo, Zazzle, Amazon, building webpages, writing articles, selling art… but I can’t make a living doing ALL of them at ONCE.

Blessedbe

Summer Foovay

Exactly two years ago today, my hubby got his first hemodialysis treatment.

It was a turning point in our lives.

Two days before I had yelled at the kidney doctor’s receptionist on the phone.  She felt he could wait another week or two for his regular appointment.  I believed he was dying and needed to be seen immediately.  I won.

The doctor took one look at him, called for the results of the blood test his regular doctor did the day before, and said “I am putting him in the hospital to start dialysis today.”

Don’t ask me why, but they had been fucking around since December the year before in full awareness of the fact he had less than 10% kidney function and failing.  Up until March he was working full time, despite constant illness.  His employer complained and refused to believe his kidneys had failed until presented with paperwork from the doctors as well as hubby’s notice.

Well, “dialysis today” became – “first thing tomorrow” which became “first thing tomorrow” again but at last April 30^th he really did finally get his first dialysis treatment.

That morning the financial officer of the hospital had come in to inform us that there were two dialysis clinics in town and they were trying to get us a “chair” as they call a regular treatment schedule – but one would not work with our insurance, and the other would not work with our doctor.

The wonderful social worker we had at the time with Income Support Division then called me to tell me that because I had gotten a part time job (which had only started a few days before and would not pay me for another month) they were going to stop all of our benefits immediately.

The employer I had the job with called to fire me, because I had left before my training was finished to take hubby to the hospital.

It was not one of my better days.  I was reeling from the triple blows and fear for my husbands life.

I excused myself from the hospital room (at the time we were still waiting for “first thing in the morning” dialysis at noon) and took a walk outside.  I sat down with my back to a tree, closed my eyes, and soaked up some much needed energy.  (We’ve been joking ever since that the poor tree probably died).  I may have cried a little, and smoked a cigarette.

I took a few deep breaths and visualized exactly what I wanted to have happen.  I wanted him to get dialysis – NOW.  I wanted those benefits reinstated immediately – that paltry $200 in cash a month we were trying to live on while SSD fought us.  I wanted everyone to get their shit together and get him a “chair”. And I wanted my employer to find a way to keep me.

On my way back into the hospital the social worker called to say she had gotten us reinstated.  As soon as I hung up from her the Doctor called because they were taking hubby in for dialysis and couldn’t find me.  Later we found out that the financial officer at the hospital was incompetent, and incorrect about the dialysis clinics.  Before the week was out almost every other thing I had visualized also came to pass.

The employer still let me go.  But that was probably for the best since the frantic times of going from one doctor to another to another to another, spending more time in Las Cruces than home between clinics and surgeries and fighting the government for his benefits, both insurance and financial had only just begun.  There was no way I could have continued working and taking care of everything else as well.

But the biggest thing is that he did start dialysis.  The long journey to recovery and reasonably stable health was at last begun.  Life did turn around that day, a lot of things changed.  We are both still here two years later and things are better.

If there is one thing I can tell you from this it is – don’t ever give up.  Even when it seems hopeless and everything and everyone is determined to crush you, don’t give up hope and don’t give up on the power of the universe to give you exactly what you want and need.  Don’t stop fighting for what you need and deserve either, no matter what.

Blessedbe

Summer Foovay