I can’t do this anymore. I’m exhausted all the time. I’m in pain all the time. I’m lucky when it’s only mild pain. More often it’s severe pain. I’m sometimes happy, but I always return to being depressed. But what’s really doing me in is my increasing inability to concentrate. I just can’t do it.
I’ve known for years that I had depression, anxiety, migraine, asthma, and anemia. When I was diagnosed last year with fibromyalgia, it made perfect sense. I’m pretty sure I’ve had it since childhood.
But I’ve realized in the last few years that I’m also autistic and have ADHD.
When I was a kid, they didn’t think girls could even be autistic or have ADHD. (Yeah, that’s what happens when you list only the symptoms of boys who have it and say “these are the criteria.” Kind of like when they write cardiology textbooks and only describe heart attacks in men, and then a woman goes to the hospital having a heart attack and they say, “You’re not having the textbook symptoms of a heart attack, therefore you’re not having one. Go home,” and she goes home and she dies.)
I’m realizing now how much autism and ADHD have affected my inability to make a living. I have tried. I have really, really tried. But there are so many things one needs to do to make a business really work that my brain just cannot do.
And getting a job somewhere is just something I don’t have the energy to do anymore. I get really tired. And executive dysfunction and inability to concentrate are big problems in pretty much any job.
I’m in the beginning stages of applying for disability.
I am not going to be making jewelry anymore. I just can’t do it anymore. I started selling off some of my beads in another etsy shop I opened a few weeks ago, TreetownBeads.etsy.com (yeah, I forgot to tell you about that. Told you my brain wasn’t working). I’ve been adding things pretty slowly (because I have no energy), so let me know if there’s something you’re looking for.
I took down the listings for custom spinning. Realistically, I am not going to have the energy to deal with carding someone’s fiber, so yeah…no. And I am not going to take any custom orders for jewelry. I still have a few pieces of jewelry that came back from a gallery that I haven’t had the energy to photograph and list yet (are you seeing a pattern here?), but I will not be making any new pieces. If you want to buy any of my jewelry, ever, well, it’s now or never.
I still have a ton of my mom’s jewelry to list. I think I’m going to start putting some things up in lots rather than individual items. When I have the energy.