Back during my undergraduate years (BS in Anthropology) I was assigned to read a book entitled Stranger in the Village of the Sick. The premise was that people live in the world of health and periodically become members of a different society, the so-named “village of the sick.”
That book made me so angry. And, my paper on the book was a diatribe against the ableist premise. See, I was born sick. I have never known what it means to be healthy. As I get older, I get new chronic illnesses and my body finds new and unique ways of manifesting those underlying illnesses.
I am generally an active and engaged person. I love exploring the world. I am an actor at a local Medieval faire. I am an extrovert. I have a million ideas of things I want to do and places I want to go. But, sometimes my body just hurts too much, my brain is too muddled, and I am just overly tired and need to sleep for a day or two.
Today is one of those days. Like, I need to take a moment and marvel at the fact that I am writing this blog. Considering that this morning words are things of mystery to my brain and my pain levels are high enough to need “the big guns” and I am in thigh-high compression socks and arm warmers to help keep the pain spikes at bay. Because a thunderstorm rolled in.
Yesterday I had all sorts of ideas for what would be on the todo list today. And, this morning I have cut it in half. And, I may not even make that much. This is okay. My hustle looks different from healthy people. My hustle is a rollercoaster. My hustle requires day to day (and sometimes hour to hour) adaptation. My hustle is still valid. It is not subpar to those who can sustain active 8-10 hour days (at least, not innately). But, it IS challenging only in that the world at large expects a different kind of hustle and struggles to make space for those bodies that exist in the world differently.
I love what I do. I will keep doing the things I love. I will do them in the ways my body allows. This is my pace. This is my hustle. And, today, that hustle might just be getting this blog post done.