Have you asked for flex time because of invisible chronic illness symptoms – and not gotten it? Emily, who blogs on Finding Equilibrium, did so and when she couldn’t get what she needed, she quit her job to work on her own in a virtual capacity. That was a big move for her. She regretted that her company couldn’t/wouldn’t meet her needs to work from home.
One person who commented on her blog noted he thinks that working for yourself (freelance) is becoming a “movement”. That could be true.
But only for people who meet at least two criteria: you need to have the right kind of skills that transfer to virtual work. Unfortunately, that’s not an option in many careers/jobs. The other is being able to afford or have access to health insurance (and other benefits).
When I wrote my book (Women Work and Autoimmune Disease: Keep Working, Girlfriend!), it was with this audience in mind: women who have either been given a recent chronic illness diagnosis or who had recently found their symptoms more problematic — and who wonder if work is possible.
The book explores the multiple issues around staying employed as well as the advantages to self employment. I’m self employed as is my co-author, Joan Friedlander but we don’t suggest that working for yourself is easy or necessarily feasible for everyone.
So, here are my suggestions before you make any big moves :
First, see if you can make your current job more amenable for you.
Next, think LONG TERM.
No one can predict how a chronic illness or disease symptoms will behave in the future. You’d need a crystal ball. But you don’t have to leave it all to chance. You can develop those skills that will make you as marketable as possible so you can have as many options as possible.
My advice to Emily is to continue working hard on developing her skills. Regardless of her future career decisions, this gives her more leverage.
When you live with invisible chronic illness, it’s easy to become overwhelmed with difficult symptoms, difficult doctors and difficult employers — and forget about thinking strategically for your long term career health.
Don’t let that happen to you.
Rosalind aka cicoach.com
Emily says
Thanks for sharing my story, Rosalind! Almost everyone I’ve told about what I’m doing has been very supportive, but I have had a few naysayers who don’t think I will be able to handle it. I just hope my confidence isn’t naive, and that quitting my job really is the best decision for me and my health. I’m not sure what the future holds, but I’m young and poor anyway, so I figured now was the best time to try something new 🙂 Thanks again for all your encouragement!
Rosalind Joffe aka cicoach.com says
Emily – this is the time when you should be experimenting with what works and doesn’t. The symptoms aren’t so bad that if you had to, you could still take another job – even one without flexibiity. Also, you’re stlll covered with health insurance. Finally there’s no one other than you relying on you. So it’s a good time to take those risks – big and small. But regarding figuring out what environment will be best for you and your health – I really believe that the key to really getting something from this, is to make decisions with intention to learn from what happens Rosalind
Christina Gombar says
Reality Check
Having struggled with work and a chronic illness for close to twenty years, I’ve both gone to bat with big companies, and been an entrepreneur. I was a financial writer with a specialty in personal financial planning.
I did everything Rosalind suggests — found the best kind of work for my skills and health, the best company, built a network of allies. But my health still worsened to the point that I had to take Long Term Disability. The problem being that ADA accommodations, like working at home, are always enforced at the discretion of management. Always, management determines what is a “reasonable accommodation.” With a traumatic brain injury from a viral infection, I could no longer do math (budgets), multi-task, or have much social energy for the required corporate politics. I could sit and stare at a computer and write, very slowly. But my employer would not reclassify my job so I could focus on what I did best and preserve my health.
At first I had a manager who was wonderful in shifting the emphasis of my job, dealing with a hostile Human Resources department. But when my reporting structure changed, my new boss no longer let me work home one day a week. It was a huge political problem, as all working Moms wanted the same privilege and none got it. Chronically ill workers are just one group of people in the work place who ask for accommodations, and there are many more parents than ill people, and more power in their numbers. Our problems do not occur in a vacuum.
Few chronically ill people who’ve had to resort to taking Long Term Disability insurance from their employer, who do not benefit from six figure liquid savings, or the support of a spouse or family, can risk giving up the medical insurance, pension and other benefits their employer’s private disability insurance provides. The catch is, some policies – like mine — don’t allow you to earn any money at all. So to make $2,000 from writing a magazine article, I would lose, FOREVER, a middle class income, family medical benefits and a pension.
Besides being hit with a catastrophic illness, starting your own business is the fastest way to go broke. All the planning in the world cannot control market forces, variables like the price of oil. A home business is great if you’ve got a financial mainstay in the house, and your income is just supplementary. But if you’re the financial linchpin – I’d suggest staying on disability, and trying to scrape enough money together to invest in a passive income strategy – owning rental real estate, building up or starting a stock market portfolio. I realize that many chronically ill people never were able to work enough to get together much savings in the first place.
If you do plan a business, make sure you have enough in your budget for savings and investment, preferably taken out of your checking account every week. Don’t rely on credit cards for day to day expenses or business funding, and have a backup plan. And if there’s anyone in your extended family who can help you, talk to them about helping you invest in real estate or some other passive investment strategy.
Rosalind Joffe aka cicoach.com says
Thank you for sharing this, Christina. I couldn’t agree more with everything you say here. I hope that I never imply that any of this is “sure thing” — or easy. And I wish it weren’t so difficult to make ends meet for those of use with CI. We all need to hear stories like yours to remember the pitfalls — so we make the best possible decisions. If living with a CI teaches us anything, it’s that there are NO guarantees in this life .