Day in the Life of a Chronically Ill Business Owner

What's it like being chronically ill, neurodivergent, and an entrepreneur? I'm gonna take you with me for a couple of days in my life. Day one is super unstructured, whereas day two has a lot more structure. Who am I to do this video?

Watch the video below, or read on for the full transcript. P.S. Since this video is so long, I only had the time to hire Rev.com to do the transcription proofing (instead of also going through them with a fine tooth comb myself). So if you notice any incorrect subtitles, let me know and I'll fix them! Thanks. 💖

Hi, I'm Cassie Winter. I'm a productivity expert and life coach for neurodivergent spoonies, and I'm a neurodivergence spoonie myself. Let's get started, shall we? Welcome

to day one. It is December 1st, 2022, and I don't wanna. (chuckles) My first alarm went off almost half an hour ago, so my second alarm is nigh. Usually I spend the half hour in between those alarms trying to rest some more, but as today is unique and it's a day in the life, I've been ruminating endlessly on what to do in all my filming and the things

in particular I want to say in this first video. And (groans) so not restful. And just really quick distinction, it's not like the healthy planning. Ruminating is just endless, anxious thought loops that you can't escape; it's not restful, it's not fun. I mean, sure, I got some planning done, but not in a healthy way. My brain is so helpful. Yay. Anyways, next step is to do the first

part of my morning routine, which is just me laying here. I've already adjusted my bed, so my head is up a little bit. And yeah, as I talked about in my morning routine videos, my first thing is always to just like let my brain and body kind of boot up before I stand up. So I always give myself about a half hour to just like kind of lie

here sitting up a little bit and do some kind of mindless stuff on my phone to let my body do its thing, let my brain do its thing. Can you tell it hasn't booted up yet? I'm just like (groans). Anyways, talk to you soon. It's been about 10 minutes, and my brain feels more alive. And I suddenly remembered something, that in my ruminating... Ruminating? What is that pronunciation?

In my ruminating that I realized I wanted to talk about, which was I had an icky dream last night. So with my extensive history of trauma, I have a tendency towards unpleasant dreams. A lot of the times they're full-on nightmares, thankfully I didn't have one last night. But I did have a icky anxiety-inducing dream last night, so that's what I was coming out of. That certainly didn't help.

(laughs) It's probably one of the reasons why I shifted into ruminating so hard. So anyways, talk to you soon. First win of the day achieved. I have changed positions; it's very exciting. But I'm checking in to let you know my partner just came to visit me and say hi. I asked them to adjust my tripod for me so I could film for today. So I had been using

my nice tripod to actually hold one of my filming lights in a overhead position over my sewing table to make it easier for me to see. It's actually something he set up for me a while back. It's been great, but I... Wow. Yep, still morning brain. That means for me to continue filming today, I would've needed to swap out the light for my phone holding attachment to do

time lapse filming and stuff. And that was one thing I was gonna be like, "All right, y'all, I'm spending spoons on it," but genius that I am, I realized, "Oh, I could ask for help." One of the things that's a big struggle with brain fog in particular, whether your brain fog is from chronic illness or something else going on, is that simple solutions or even just like basic

understanding of what's going on for you and what would help is hard. (chuckles) (Cassie sighs) So still booting up. But I'm excited that I had the presence of mind at this point to ask for help, and that's gonna make the rest of my day easier 'cause I won't have to spend spoons standing up doing that as part of my morning, and that's gonna help a lot, so excited.

It is time to get up. As stated before, I don't wanna. (Cassie groans) All right, what's the plan? The next part of my morning routine is pretty straightforward. It's time for me to feed the cats 'cause I'm in charge of breakfast, my partner's in charge of dinner before bed. And I wanna get the camera set up so you could watch me do my morning chore, which is always

part of my morning routine. And, yeah, I'm hoping that filming that won't interrupt my ability to listen to a podcast while I do stuff, 'cause I find that helpful for my morning. But anyways, catch you in the next shot. All right, cats are in the process of being fed. I have been up for, I don't know, 10 minutes, and my, ugh, my heart rate is kind of going

in between 100 and 110, which is, I think, to be expected, is interesting. So the way my POTS, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome... Wow, brain fart. How that works for me is if my heart doesn't get tachycardic enough, I get kind of faint and lightheaded 'cause essentially my brain isn't getting enough blood. So while tachycardia sucks, my brain tends to be a little bit happier when my heart rate

is like north of 110, so kind of explains why I'm feeling a bit wild right now. Yeah. Okay. What am I doing next? What am I doing next? I am looking at my cute cat. Goodness, he's done with his breakfast; now I need to put it on the floor so she can have breakfast. Long story short. What? No, that's the brain fog. I should probably start moving. I've

been standing in one place. Okay, so I'm going to attach my phone to the tripod and then film myself doing some chores. Ah. Oh. I'm not gonna be able to listen to my podcasts while I film. That's really dumb. (sighs) All right, time to ask my partner for more help and see if he's willing to set up the DSLR for me 'cause I don't think I can morning

without something to listen to, I need that stimulation, so here we go. So my partner was kind enough to help me set up the DSLR on my tripod instead, thank goodness. It's all set up now. (sighs) But that was a lot of standing to get that done. And usually by this time in my morning routine I'm like done standing and I can sit and eat breakfast. So I

haven't made breakfast, but I definitely need to sit. Let's see, how's my heart rate doing? Oh yeah, it's around 79 right now. And, like, it's really nice not being super tachycardic 'cause that's like a really uncomfortable feeling in my chest. But, like, not having enough blood to the brain is hard. And I'm out of breath 'cause I was like low cardio for 15 minutes being up. So (sighs)

the reason why I'm documenting all of this is because this is part of my work day today, like, I need to film this video for YouTube. And I kind of see that the point of a day in the life as a neurodivergent spoonie business owner is like really seeing behind the scenes and like how much I'm struggling. And I know that there are spoonies and neurodivergent individuals out

there who have significantly more support needs than I do. But I also don't want to devalue or undersell how much I struggle on day-to-day basis, and that's why I'm doing this. Some other things that are going on with me, for context, is two days ago I did way too much, like holy cow, way too much, and I'm still recovering from that. And what else is going on? Oh

yeah, ever since I got out of bed I've noticed I have a bit of a sore throat. But it's pretty obvious to me that it's a I-had-reflux-last-night sore throat, and so my throat's just kind of burned. And what that tells me is that I didn't have the head of my bed raised enough last night to prevent that from happening, which, oops, my bad, will be doing that tonight.

(chuckles) Yeah, I'm shaky from being super POTSy. And as you can tell, my brain barely has two brain cells to rub together. So I'm gonna sit here and sip some electrolyte water for a few minutes, gather my wits about me, and then proceed with the rest of my morning routine. Hello, this is Voiceover Cassie from December 20th, so the distant future for the Cassie you see on screen

and the one week old past from when this video comes out. Anyways, you are watching me unload the clean dishwasher. And as most people know, things are still a little bit wet, so I've got my towel to dry things off. My heart rate was around 100 here, didn't feel good. Bending over and standing up over and over and over again as a POTSy, not fun, super not a

fan. Hopefully this is a little bit more visually stimulating than the majority of the content for this video. And I apologize, this video today is a long one. Oh hey, look, heart rate's 101 again. But I really wanted to make sure that I was showing everything that goes into a day in the life of a neurodivergent spoonie business owner. Because if I just showed you me doing work,

that would be really boring and not demonstrative of how just existing in a chronically ill body with a neurodivergent mind is a lot of work. Anyways, I'm making my morning smoothie right now. It's basically half a cup of quick oats, a tablespoon of dark cocoa powder. Oh, there's me having a brain fart. (laughs) I was having a lot of brain farts that morning. Handful of dark chocolate chips

and a small portion of white chocolate chips and then a third of a cup of cashews and one and one thirds cup milk, blitzed into oblivion. And then this is me practicing dancing. It's sped up so much you can't really see the quality of movement. But whenever I have like a couple of minutes in the kitchen or I'm just waiting for something to happen, I usually either do

a few drills to practice dancing or I do a PT exercise. I've got a Dyna-Band hooked into the door jam of the larger door to the right of the screen so I can do my PT exercises for my knees. Here I am doing some more practicing. Working on something called directional intent right now. And it's basically dusting off the cobwebs of distant me jazz Cassie to bring that

old technique into my partner dancing technique. And this is me cleaning up. So excited, it's almost time for breakfast. My breakfast is ready. I am so excited. And also taking off my headphones just now, I just realize that when my headphones are attached to my phone, it uses the headphone microphone, which is terrible. So I apologize if some of those videos sounded awful, but I hope I can

fix them in post. (Cassie sighs) I'm out of breath from doing all of that. Let's see if my heart rate is coming down at all. Oh yeah, it's like whew. It's now down to 87. I feel icky and out of spoons. So I'm gonna enjoy my breakfast now, and I will see you soon. So I have finished my morning smoothie. (Cassie sighs) I am so out of it.

So usually by this time in my morning routine, I, my brain feels ready for the day, but (Cassie sighs) I don't think my brain's really gonna get up and running today. But I still got a lot to do, so wow wee. I'm also experiencing that post-eating POTSiness. Oh, apparently my cat has gone to aggressively visit my partner. So that's my partner saying hi to my cat, if you

can hear it. Anyways, where was I? Yeah, so even though I had a liquid breakfast, which helps mitigate this problem, it's like sitting like a lump of coal in my stomach. And I can tell that all of my blood is going to my stomach to do the digesting. So I feel, my head feels like I'm still standing up, if a little bit worse actually, it's fantastic. Wow. (Cassie

sighs) So I think I'm gonna let myself sit here for a little while longer and then proceed with my workday. All right, I have filmed a quick TikTok of something that came up on a group coaching call yesterday that I really wanted to share. Something really important to understand about the concepts of body doubling and coworking: If those are something you need in order to do things, in

order to have successful task initiation and follow-through, that is okay. It is morally neutral to need body doubling and coworking. This is something that came up on a call, a group call with my clients yesterday, and I just thought it was really important to share with all of you. And now it's... Goodness, my first video I filmed at around 10:30 AM. It is now 12:46 PM. As you

can tell, my morning routine took a lot longer today for two reasons: A, I'm really POTSy, so not doing too good; and also the added task of filming my day is costing me more spoons. So, huh, I'm finally at the point... I usually get to where I am now, where I'm looking at my Notion dashboard to see what's on my plate for the day, I usually get to

this point by noon, so I'm very... I'm late today. But I work for myself so I'm not in trouble. What I'm going to do next is basically go through my morning check-in, morning, (chuckles) and see what's on my plate. And then I'm going to take you with me while I time block the rest of the day, so that's what's next. All right, here we are. Unique situation today.

I'm working in the living room instead of from bed because I plan on washing my sheets today. And it's just not worth the work of like working in there for part of the day then moving out here so I can do my sheets, it's just a whole deal. So normally I'm in there, but today I'm out here, and that means I don't have my big whiteboard to time

block on. So I'm gonna be time blocking in Google Calendar, and I thought that'd be easier to show for all of you too. And I can do it all seated, very exciting. Today is a unique day in that I don't have anything actually scheduled. Usually I have at least one if not more Zoom calls scheduled in a day that I need to work around, but today I got

nada, nothing. And that is both a blessing and a curse because it's nice to just have the whole day free, and that's in part why I'm doing my filming a life in the day today because I have all of this time to let that process take as long as it needs to. And it is now one o'clock. Usually I get to this point in my day by noon.

My morning routine tends to take me about an hour to an hour and a half depending on what chore I do and how much recovery time I need from any stage in my morning routine. So I have just spent time going through my Notion dashboard to see what's on my plate for today. And I also checked in with my private Discord community that I love so much. And

it's so motivating to just go in and see people showing up for themselves, showing up messy. And in particular, I love checking in on the text coworking channel because I have clients from all over the world. So some people are nearing the end of their day right now, and there's this whole thread of people coworking and guiding themselves through their day, and I'm just so proud of them,

I adore them all so much. And I created this community to create this sense for my clients, that like, "Oh, I'm not alone. This is hard, and that's okay. It's okay to pace myself. It's okay to need support." But, like, it helps me too. It is so motivating to go in there and see that. So I'm kind of riding high off of checking in there, I love it

so much. But now it is time for me to time block my day. So no structure. I have to create the structure for myself. Y'all know how hard that is. It has taken me years to get to a point where I can do this for myself. It's taken a lot of practice. But let me show you my thought process real quick. First of all I'm gonna block in

what we've already done. So do-do-do. This was my morning routine. Now we are at one o'clock. I have kind of one big thing that I need to do today, and that is call and fix something that was a mistake on my 2023 HealthCare.gov application, really frustrating. I'm gonna give myself like an hour for that, and that's probably something I'm gonna do first. And since it's kinda like an

ambiguous thing, I'm gonna block it in first. Usually I block in breaks first, but I figure I'm just gonna play my break by ear. If the call takes forever, I'll take a break right afterwards; if it doesn't take forever, I'll probably end up moving things around. But let's just say this hour right here, all HealthCare.gov. And let's make it a different color. Let's make it gray 'cause it

stresses me out. So I'm gonna put in a break right here. Let's change that color to lavender. Ah. okay. And then I think this rest of it is just gonna be my afternoon chunk, and I've got a lot of little things. I have to create a poll to schedule with my clients my end of year review workshop. And I have a message I have to do in my

role as a dance teacher. And I also have to write a YouTube script for the previous video, so this is where time traveling comes in. So the video y'all saw two weeks ago, even though for me it comes out two weeks from now, I need to write the script for that video so I can film it this weekend. And I should also write the official intro/outro to this

video. So I've got lots of like little things to do, and then writing that one big YouTube script. So this is just going to be pomodoros to get through my to-do list, so that's what I'm gonna call it. So this is my day. You can look in my past time blocking videos, and I even have a a TikTok recently. The way I time block is usually a very

simple process. First of all, I put down whatever is actually scheduled for that day. So if I already have Zoom calls, appointments, that kind of thing, that goes on the time block first. The second thing I time block is my breaks because usually when I have a schedule of calls, finding when I need to be taking breaks is the next most important thing, so I put that in

next, and then I fill in the nooks and crannies with time for specific tasks. Yeah, that's what I do. And then usually things change as I go. So like my idea of how this day was gonna go was very different when I woke up than it is now because my morning routine, being out of spoons and having to also film this video today, made my morning routine run

an hour longer than normal. So I'm playing it by ear. We're running fast and loose today. But this is the plan so far. Wish me luck on my phone call. I'll probably also be on hold for a while, so I'll see if I can get any of my little things done while I'm on hold. Wish me luck. Y'all, it's a miracle. I wasn't on hold at all. And

the person I talked to with HealthCare.gov was so helpful and we just got it done. It was like a less than 10-minute call. Like, what? That's incredible. So now I'm gonna spend the rest of the time that I time blocked actually finishing the process of applying for insurance for 2023. 'Cause they offered to help me with that, but I was like, "I think I can do the rest

on my own. I will just call back if I need help." So (chuckles) here I go. Actually this reminds me of something that I should talk about. Health insurance as a chronically ill individual is heh. So up until January 1st of 2023, I will have been on CareOregon Medicaid for, goodness, ever since I had access to it, so I think over five years at this point, and that's

because I qualified for it. So my income was below poverty level, 'cause that's essentially what needs to be the case in order to have free health insurance. And what's been interesting is this past year, because of this business, I now make well over that, which is wonderful but it now means that I have to pay for my own insurance. But because of the pandemic, Oregon has actually had

a wonderful policy where they won't kick anyone off of Medicaid just because their income has increased. It's a really wonderful policy on Oregon's part, and I really applaud them for that. That being said, they don't make it easy to escape. So I need to change insurance in order to move forward with a very particular medical thing that I need to do. There's a surgery I need, and it's

probably gonna happen out of state, and there's no way I could have done that with Medicaid essentially. So I wanted to change insurance earlier this year because I could, like, afford better and like move forward with my medical stuff, but they wouldn't let me. And I was like, "Wait, wait, wait, wait. So you're just holding on to me?" And I was told that the only time I could

change it was open enrollment, and so it is now the period of open enrollment; when this video comes out it will have closed, 'cause I think it closes on December 15th. But (sighs) it's been a process trying to figure this out. There was this little button, this little checkbox in the HealthCare.gov application that was like, "Do you qualify for Medicaid?" And I'm like... This is probably just my

autistic brain making things way too complicated, but I'm like, "Well if I applied right now, no; but I also have it right now because they're not kicking anybody off. So which is it?" It turns out if I were to apply right now I would be denied Medicaid. That's the answer I go with. I do not currently qualify for Medicaid if I were to apply right now. So when

I first filled out the application, I had checked that box, "Yes, I do apply." But that meant at the end of the day I got no tax subsidies whatsoever for a different health insurance, and I'm like, "That's not good. I do need some subsidies. I'm not making that much money." (Cassie sighs) So that's what I was getting help with, 'cause you can't go back and uncheck that box

yourself online, you need help from someone. So that's what the phone call that was I just did. (Cassie sighs) Otherwise I'm gonna go pick my plan now. Wish me luck. Okay, so it is now 1:39, and I have knocked over the next two dominoes in my health insurance thing. I made that phone call and then I picked a plan on HealthCare.gov. My next step is to pay for

my first month, but I'm waiting to see... Because of the hiccups I've had along the way, I'm waiting for some information to proceed with that. So I have added it to my Notion to-do list for tomorrow to work on the next domino. So I can now like relax, I can worry about it tomorrow, and I can move on to something else. Now we're back in the time blocking

calendar because I wanted you to see how I had blocked off a whole hour for this 'cause thought I was gonna be on hold for like at least 30 minutes, you know? But magically no hold time whatsoever. (lips smack) Love it. So I'm gonna go ahead and adjust that to be more accurate. And what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna add right here some admin because now I

can work on some of the smaller tasks that I had planned for today. So I have to create that poll to schedule. And I also have to message someone in the dance community about something in my dance teaching life. So, yeah, that's what I'm gonna do now. Wish me luck. Y'all, look at my cat. Isn't Kayla stinking precious? Oh my goodness, I love her so much. And then

here is me trying to get set up and dropping the power cord to my laptop. (Cassie groans) I use a beefy, beefy gaming laptop, so therefore I can't really get too much time on battery alone. And so this is me going about my work. Somewhere in this sped up time lapse I filmed the time blocking shenanigans that you saw just before this. And I'm not gonna show you

all of this 'cause this is basically an hour or so of me just working in my computer; which ironically speaking to you now Voiceover Cassie doing the same thing in basically the same location, but new sofa. We got a new sofa, it's very exciting. The only thing that's really happening is you can see the light changing outside. Yeah, it's kind of boring. So we're gonna jump ahead towards

the end, it'll get a little bit darker, and then we'll move on to, you know, me telling you about my day some more. It's very glamorous. Can you tell? (Cassie sighs) It's break time. I got those two little things done. I got the poll created and shared with my community on Discord, and I also got the message drafted and sent it to the dance community member who I

need to talk to. I am feeling so much better than I was really up until just like an hour ago. Holy cow, the last hour has done wonders for how I feel emotionally today. 'Cause, as as you know, I was having a really rough start to the day, super POTSy, really outta spoons, lots to do and no spoons to do them with, and also that I had had

that, like, really anxiety-inducing dream last night, and I started my day with like 20 minutes straight of ruminating, which ain't great for the mental health. (device ringing) My head is feeling a little clearer, and I think that is mainly because I have been sitting for well over an hour straight now; that has done wonders for my POTS. So I'm not gonna get up and do too terribly much

during my break. I might try to start my laundry, washing my sheets, but that's about it. Otherwise I'm just going to enjoy myself, maybe do some social media, some reading, watching some YouTube. I don't think I'm up to eating anything 'cause I can still feel my smoothie sitting in my stomach. Like, there's a reason why I have a liquid breakfast most days, is because of my gastroparesis, it

just doesn't leave my stomach for 5 million years. But, yeah, mainly like emotionally I'm feeling a lot better, I'm like, "I've done some good work today," and I'm on track to get all the things done today that I need to get done, which is a lot especially for a low spoon day. And it helps that my POTS is feeling a bit better because I've been sitting here for

as long as I have. And as you've seen from the other video, I've had my feet up this whole time. So feeling good. I'm excited to move on to my break. So I just spent some time watching some dance videos of a student of mine. There was a local Jack and Jill competition last night, and they got first place. And they sent me all their videos and are

asking for some feedback, and I just was on cloud nine watching their videos. I know I'm on my break, but dancing is fun and meaningful to me and it's a nice change of pace. And so now I'm going to film a really quick bit of feedback for my student. Classic post-dance teaching fainting pose. (Cassie sighs) I only filmed like five-minute thing for my dance student, but the combination

of standing, talking, and dancing to demonstrate... (sighs) What's my... Come on, watch. Wow, I really thought it'd be higher. I think it just crashed 'cause I'm out of spoons and it can't maintain a tachycardic state; so as soon as I lay down, it was just like (mimics whooshing). (Cassie sighs) Anyways, I'm gonna proceed with the rest of my break now being supine. Talk to you soon. All right,

minor miscalculation and an update. It is now 3:17. According to my time blocking, I should be getting onto my next batch of work pomodoros. But a couple things happened. One, I realized, "Oh, I should probably eat something now." And so I have reheated some leftovers from last night. And while it was reheating, 'cause I like to do the low-and-slow method in the microwave so things don't explode, while

that was going on I stripped my bed and put all my bedding into the washing machine, so that's going. And there was some more time left over, so I went ahead and loaded the dishwasher. You saw me unload it this morning, so I've now loaded everything that was on the counter into there. Not enough to run it, but still glad I did that. But now of course I

am out of breath. (exhales sharply) (Cassie laughs) (Cassie sighs) POTS is not fun. Anything that is not seated or lying down is exercise essentially, cardiovascular exercise. And even sitting with my feet on the floor is exhausting. So I have my feet up right now, I look like a human pretzel. But anyways, I'm going to eat. I'm not going to rush myself eating 'cause I know that will make

me really ill. And then I will get on to my next work session when I can 'cause it's more important to not hurt myself than it is to get to work since the day is much more flexible today. So check in later. All right, I've finished my lunch. I watched a fun sewing YouTube video while I ate. I didn't rush but I also didn't try to waste the

rest of my day either. But it is now 3:43, so that took me like essentially an extra half an hour. I am going to... With the goal of stopping my work day at five, I'm gonna do a little bit of admin. And then probably starting at 4:00, I'm going to dive into two pomodoros; so 25 minutes of work, five minutes of rest. And it's gonna be all writing,

working on, again, the last video you saw but the next video I'm filming. Time travel YouTube. Wee! Talk to you soon. And we are back for more computer work. More of the same. Hey, look, I'm animated. I'm on Zoom. A little bit, in case you haven't seen my spoonie desk setup video, basically I got lap desk, obvious. The little light in the corner is my Zoom light. I

don't know why it's not on. I must not have updated Zoom or something. And then I've got my microphone. My partner just screwed that into the lap desk for me. The little black wedge in between the light and the microphone is my stream deck, lots of fancy buttons and hot keys and macros. And then there's the laptop itself. Got a little USB port shenanigans also command stripped to

the desk. So I only have a couple of cords to plug into the laptop itself if I ever wanna take the laptop out. And then the webcam I have is the original version of the Elgato Facecam. They now have a new one that's 4K. I want it but I'm not gonna buy it. Eh. But anyways, it's more of the same, me doing a whole bunch of work. I

think my head's bopping along 'cause I'm listening to music as I work, but anyways... All right, coming up is one of my favorite parts of working at home. My precious kitty Kayla is back to snug some more. Look at her. Look at how precious she is. Oh my goodness, she sniffed my face. She's very thorough. Oh no, she's needing me. Oh. As I speak to you now from

voiceover land, she is also snuggled at my hip right now. Oh, the way she swung her head and squeaked at me. Oh goodness. That's a good snug. Oh she wants more scratches. Y'all, I am such a cat lady. You have no idea. Also my recent YouTube obsession is the closet historian on YouTube. I love her so much. If you're into vintage sewing, check her channel out. But I

find my autistic brain taking on a voiceover mask that is similar to hers. I'm not doing it on purpose, but can I turn it off? No. (Cassie sighs) Oh, there we go. The Zoom light's working. I ended up having to implement that because my partner is also neurodivergent and works from home, and we tend to interrupt each other a lot and want attention from each other just because

it's a form of stimming for us as a couple. And (laughs) the problem would be I would be like on a call with a client or it would be a sales call with a potential client and my partner would barge in making cute noises, probably a screaming cat in his arms, and that wasn't very professional. So (laughs) we got me a availability light that automatically links with my

Zoom so it's really obvious to him whether or not I am available for interruption. It's been very handy. (chuckles) Ooh, it gets dark, doesn't it? Anyways, onward. I have come to the end of my day, and it is a miracle. When my timer went off, I was like, I was like this close. Like, if I had just had 10 more minutes, I probably could have finished both of

the scripts that I need to have written by this weekend. So close. But like I talk about in my program and my clients are well aware of, I was exercising my stopping muscle so I can finish my day. So I only have... (Cassie exhales deeply) I'm out of breath 'cause I just got up and did something real quick, and so now I'm sitting down again; so POTSy, wee.

I only have a couple more things to do. I want to get all of the footage from my two cameras onto my computer. So all of the footage for today, day one, is in my computer, I don't have to worry about it. And I obviously need to finish washing my bedding. I think I can move it to the dryer now and then make my bed later. But overall

I'm really, I'm really proud of myself for all that I got done today. And as you can see from like an external perspective, I only, like, worked for maybe three hours, and that's pretty average for me to work on my business for usually two to four hours is the range on an average day. Every once in a while it's longer if I have a big deadline and I've

been flaring more than usual, but on average I personally tend to have four to six usable hours a day. And on weekdays I try to make two to four of those actual work on my business. And considering how rough a shape I was in this morning, as you saw, I'm really proud of everything I got done today. And there was a fair amount that I was just dreading

emotionally and I had a lot of resistance for. And two things really helped, well, three things really helped with that. One, my history of showing up for myself; so I trust myself to do hard things when I need to, when I choose to. Another is I had my wonderful community to co-work with. So I was in the text-based co-working channel a lot today, hanging out with my clients

while they were also getting things done. And three, the act of filming myself today gave me a lot of opportunities to really check in with how I was doing and then make conscious choices about how to proceed in a self-compassionate way. I always do better when I'm able to do that. And today the structure of filming my day really helped me do that a lot more than I

probably would have been able to otherwise on a rough day like today, which is something I'm gonna be reflecting on going forward. But yeah, I'm going to let myself just move videos to my computer, finish my bedding, and enjoy my evening. I will not be cooking, do not have the spoons for that. So we'll be snacking on ready-made food or frozen meals that we've got around here. And

probably gonna be doing super, super duper low spoon required activities like watching stuff or playing a computer game. I do have a sewing project I wanna make progress on, but I doubt I'll work on that tonight. I really need to let myself rest. But anyways, that was day one; super unstructured day. I'll catch you in a few days. I think next Tuesday is when I'm going to film

my next one, which is a more structured day. So I will see you then. Thanks for coming with me today. Bye. So that was a super unstructured day in my life. Before we move on to a more structured day, I'm curious what are your biggest struggles on unstructured days like that? Let me know when the comments Welcome to day two. (sighs) It was a rough night last night.

On a scale of 1 to 10, one being a great night's sleep and 10 being no sleep at all plus horrible pain, it's like a five, right there, smack dab in the middle. It took me forever to fall asleep and then I wasn't able to like stay asleep. I kept waking up over and over and over again, my brain just going wild. And then no position was comfortable

enough to relax. It was, ugh, it was a rough time. Anyways, I'm going to proceed with the brain booting-up portion of my morning routine, and I will see you soon. To add insult to injury, the moment I set up, the act of sitting up launched so much bile up my throat and into my mouth, my entire throat and back of my mouth are now burned, so it feels

terrible. (Cassie clears throat) Why? We are back for some morning routine shenanigans. The day before I was unloading a clean dishwasher, today loading a dirty one. Yet again, the constant bending over and standing up, not fun. But what you gonna do? It needs to happen. And hand washing dishes is absolutely out of the question for me because POTS and pain. Being a tall person in a standard kitchen,

you see how low the counter is, like it's below my hips, bending over a counter to do stuff, mm-mm, not good. So the few items that we have that need to be hand washed, I make my partner do that because I simply cannot. It's interesting. Watching this back, it occurs to me it might be wise on mornings where I feel like I just need a little extra boost

to get through this to use my inhaler. Film yourself doing stuff, you'll discover things. Making a different breakfast this morning, just some simple oatmeal. Instead of using a whole bunch of sugar, I just use some dark chocolate chips and peanut butter; and it's quite tasty. (Cassie laughs) I remember that. Okay, I was so foggy that I thought I had heated up the oatmeal in the microwave, right? But

I had set the timer. So a minute and 40 seconds goes by, I open the microwave and it still looks just like uncooked oatmeal with water in it. And oh boy. So of course try again, as they say. (chuckles) It's like the equivalent of putting the cereal in the fridge and the milk in the pantry. Am I right? Do this kind of stuff all the time. So for

this day, actually working in the bedroom. So making my bed, getting it all ready. I use that Nuzzie weighted blanket as a a backdrop 'cause my purple sheets against like the red wall background is a bit aggressive for being on a Zoom call; I just don't like it aesthetically. So I add the Nuzzie blanket, it's a more neutral color to have as a background when I'm on Zoom

calls. Here I am doing my PT exercises that are mostly... Like, they're for the whole hip to feet kind of situation, but it's mainly to help with my bad knees. I am out of cartilage and my patellas don't track properly, so not fun. And wasn't actually able to get surgery because of insurance shenanigans, which is frustrating, and it forced me down the PT path. But luckily PT has

been helping a lot, so I'm hoping to avoid surgery for a little while longer in my life. I know I will need it at some point. 'Cause y'all with Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, you know if you are an active person, as I am a dancer, it beats up your joints. All right, breakfast. I had forgotten my phone, of course. So here I am hopping into bed. My heart rate

is still high. Awesome! The irony of watching myself be super POTSy while I, Voice Over Cassie, am here also being POTSy. My feet are are up, but my body is hating that I had anything to eat for breakfast, and tachycardic. It's a good time. That was sarcasm, if you couldn't tell. I still find myself slipping into Closet Historian's style of voiceover. And again, it is outside of my

control. I love her. (Cassie sighs) Do I have any personality of my own? Nobody knows. So while I eat breakfast, I don't work 'cause, like, I need to take my time eating. Like many other spoonies, I have a fair amount of vitamins that I take with my breakfast. I know other spoonies take significantly more than I do, and I used to be one of those spoonies, but I

simply cannot pull that off anymore. So I've got it narrowed down to magnesium, vitamin C, vitamin D, and methylated B vitamins. And those methylated B vitamins have helped me so much. Ever since I learned that I can't metabolize normal B vitamins thanks to more wonky genetics, switching to a methylated B vitamin made a huge difference to me a few years ago. This is my precious Kayla. She wants

me to sit cross-legged so she can snuggle me. All right. All right, here you go. Aw, thanks, sweetie. And down. (Cassie laughs) Well, I guess I'm not gonna be time blocking over there today. I mean... Ah, yeah, I'll scratch you. I mean, that was the plan 'cause on day one I showed you time blocking on Google Calendar. But I have been chosen... And my heart rate is still

at 94, crying bunny. I've been sitting here for how long? Like 20 minutes. Oh, okay. I'll give you some more. Hi. Yes. Okay, so, oh goodness. So... Hmm. And I'm probably gonna have to have my partner come in here and turn on that camera so you can co-work with me. You can go check out my, like, full bedroom office set up in the card that was above just

now. But oh my goodness, isn't Kayla adorable? She is such a princess and she is so cute. See, told you, crazy cat lady. And earlier, I didn't mention it, but while I was doing my PT exercises on this day two morning, you could see my other cat Oreo, the black and white tuxedo cat, hanging out. He likes to help me with those exercises, it's really adorable. Looks like

I'm on yet another Zoom call. My life is basically computer work and Zoom calls. That is the business I have built for myself. There's no other way, (chuckles) honestly, with my very low capacity. That's what I gotta do if I'm gonna be an entrepreneur. And really proud of myself for building my business the way I have over the past several years because, oh man, it fits into my

capacity. As it grows I continue to have to make adjustments to fit it into my capacity. Like, right now I'm finding myself stretched a bit too thin, so looking forward to the bit of a vacation I'm gonna give myself in February. Very excited about that. But yeah, more computer work. It never ends. And if you're curious about the purple stuffed animal to the right on the bed next

to mine, that is a Moon Pal, a weighted stuffy, and I love it. Well, here we are again due to aforementioned cats snuggling. We're time blocking in Google Calendar again today. But also, yeah, my heart rate... Oh geez, it's 99. It's 100, it's 99. Oh, again. It's Bad News Bears today, so I appreciate not standing up. Mm-hmm. So what has happened so far? Basically did my morning routine

here. And this is what I'm talking about a more structured day. So I have two things scheduled today. Nerdy West Coast Swing prep, that's my weekly meeting with my dance teaching partner for our online content that we do, it's called Nerdy West Coast Swing. Usually that meeting is anywhere from one to two hours long, and then usually we socialize a little bit afterwards. This gray thing here isn't

something I participate in. I call my clients in my program Muses, so this is their Muse-led co-working; there's one scheduled every day of the week. And then, but I am hosting a workshopping call for my clients at 5:00. So as you can see, if I wanna just like be done at the end of that call, I'll have much time today, so... And the other thing is because of

how exhausted I am, if I want to be alive and do a good job for my clients at five o'clock, I need to do as little as possible between now and then. And I'm already tired from my morning routine. POTS sucks. Why did I right click? Anyways. No! (Cassie sighs) One of those days. And yes, my throat still burns from the bile, and that was an hour and

a half ago. Awesome. (Cassie sighs) Okay, let me think this through. I basically have two hours to play with, less than two hours, 'cause as you can see by this red line, it is noon right now. I cannot spend all of that time working. I mean, in an ideal world based on how I'm feeling, I wouldn't do any work between now and two o'clock for my meeting. (Cassie

sighs) But that... (sighs) I think this is one of those days where pushing myself just a tiny bit is important. So here's what I'm gonna do. Rule number one of time blocking is to put all your actual scheduled things; and because we're in Google Calendar, they're already done for me. Second thing is to put in breaks first. So I'm gonna make 1:00 to 2:00 my break. And I'm

gonna change the color of it so it's really easy to distinguish. And this time, between noon and 1:00, is gonna be admin. So I'm gonna be catching up with my Discord community, checking my Notion system, making sure I'm on top of things, checking my email, that kinda stuff. That shouldn't take more than like 15 minutes. And then I will reevaluate and see how many spoons I have. 'Cause

the next thing that is on the docket today, I'm pretty sure, is video editing for YouTube. So that's me time blocking my day. And this is why I wanted to show you all a more structured day because when I have existing meetings, it really cuts down my ability to fit work in between the cracks in a way that doesn't exacerbate my chronic illness or creates a point of

diminishing returns for my brain fog, my executive dysfunction, that kind of stuff. So I have come to a point where I understand that this next hour it's possible for me to do some work. It's not gonna be a lot, I'm not gonna like move the needle a whole bunch, but it'll be just a little bit. And I know that little bit will make a huge difference to future

me, like the rest of this week me. So, yeah, that be the time blocking. And now onward to all the admin I was referring to earlier. Wish me luck. Y'all, it's just never ending, computer work. I don't want you to have to sit through too much of this, so let's just skip it. Ha. All right. I managed to do all my admin, and then I did video editing

and just posted my updated YouTube channel trailer to my channel and got that set up as my like... When you come to my channel page for the first time, that's the first video that starts playing. I always find it really annoying to make a channel trailer, you have to like officially publish it. So anybody who subscribed to my channel will get like a notification about that video, and

it's so annoying. I wish I could have it unlisted and then set it as my channel trailer, that would be nice, but I can't. Ha. So, anyways, I now get to have a break. It's 108 right now. I now get to have a break until two. The main thing I need to do is get up out of bed because this is where I'm going to be sitting for

my two Zoom meetings at the end of the day, and I want to like not be here in this position all day. Unfortunately that means that I have to usnug my cat. How am I supposed to usnug it? It's gonna get mad at me. Wish me luck. I have successfully removed my lap desk from my lap, but this is what's left. See, lap desk, cat. Hi. Oh. Oh.

You are both the best part of my day and the most tiresome. I love you, you silly thing. (mimics cat chirping) More very, very important cat content. Can't get enough. Oh, she's so needy. Can you chirp for the voiceover, Kayla, because you're right here. No, you're too curled up? Oh goodness, you're cute. Double dose of cute. But again, I'm not gonna make you sit through all of this

because that's cruel and unusual. So I just finished my meeting with my dance teaching partner. It was about an hour long, and thankfully we didn't have too much official stuff to do today, just kind of like little bits and bobs here and there, which was nice 'cause my dance teaching partner also has POTS and EDS. So on days like today, we're really kind to each other and we

take it easy. And we ended up just watching a few videos from an event and enjoying watching those and talking about them with each other. 'Cause there's a reason why our brand is called Nerdy West Coast Swing, we are huge nerds and we love watching and analyzing videos. We do it even when it's not published on YouTube. Anyways, (sighs) it is now about 3:00 PM and I have

two hours until my workshopping call with my clients. In an ideal world, I would love to be able to spend these next two hours working on next week's YouTube video. But (exhales deeply) if I'm gonna really show up and be there for my clients, I need to save myself for it 'cause that's how foggy I am today. So I'm probably gonna go back out into the living room.

I once again have to excise myself from my snugly cat (chuckles) and I'm just gonna kind of relax and try not to use the gray matter very much for the next couple of hours. So that's what I'll be up to. Talk to you soon. Welcome to my living room sofa. I've been out here, I don't know, 10 minutes or so. And I've started ruminating again. And I thought

I would share 'cause getting to a place in my life and my business where I can take two hours like this to rest and purposefully not do anything so that I can have all my faculties about me to coach my clients, it's been a long road to get here. And I still struggle with it because all of the old messaging that I'm just being lazy, that I'm not

doing enough, like, all of that messaging is still in here. I'm still healing from it and I still struggle with it a lot. And so when I give myself time off on purpose, I come up against those. And so basically been coaching myself through it and reminding myself that I'm not lazy, I'm disabled. That's really important. There is a reason why I have so much less capacity than

an able-bodied, neurotypical, mentally healthy person. And then the other thing that's hard about those thoughts is they make me question: "Am I really this tired or is this just the depression today?" And first of all, that kind of black and white thinking is very indicative of my autism; and I know it's indicative of other forms of neurodivergence as well. But it's not one or the other, it's a

gray area, it's an and. And if I really think back through everything I did last week, I did so much last week. And technically Sunday was a working day for me 'cause I had to do a whole bunch of filming, and yesterday I started taking it easier. And so basically this week I'm recovering from last week. So I have purposely put less on my plate this week in

order to recover and to be able to do more things in the future. But when we come back to this moment, it's like an old dirt road that's had like wheel ruts ground into it over a century. The wheel ruts are so deep for my thinking to be like, "You're lazy, you're not doing enough, therefore depression." It's really hard to drive outside of those wheel ruts in my

brain. So, (sighs) logically I know I have every right to the rest I am taking right now. And furthermore, like, you don't have to earn rest. Like, we're humans, we deserve rest regardless of whether we've earned it by capitalist standards or anything like that. (vehicle beeping) And in this case, even though I don't need to have earned it, I technically have. And it's not so much that I've

earned it, it's like I have gotten to a point where I need it, and rest has become a non-negotiable for me. But that doesn't make the depression thinking go away. So it's hard for me to enjoy this time. Hopefully through talking to you all about it, usually I do all of this inside my own head, like talking to myself, coaching myself through these moments, not usually talking to

a camera. But hopefully through this conversation with myself and with you today, my rest will be restful and enjoyable. I'll do my best. I know I'm going to be struggling with those, those false beliefs and that depression rut in the road of my mind that's not going away. But I'm gonna do my best and I'm gonna enjoy myself the best I can. All right, my break is over.

It is time for me to move back into the bedroom to host my workshopping call with my clients in my program The Action Navigator. Once again my cat Kayla has stuck me to my spot. It's so bad, the life of a cat mom, right? All righty, last work session of the day. Here we go. Putting my bed back into the upright position, closing the curtains, getting ready to

coach my amazing, amazing clients in my program The Action Navigator. I call them Muses. I love them all so much. I pinch myself. This is what I do, this is what I do. I help amazing people and I get to talk to amazing people every single day. Like, how did I do this? It doesn't seem real. Like, I think back to my Groundhog Day video that I did

over a year ago describing my never ending Groundhog Day in life. Basically college burnt me out so bad, and I still was undiagnosed with my chronic illnesses but still very chronically ill, and I just spent almost a decade of my life just on the sofa all day, every day, doing "nothing productive" with my life and being super duper depressed. And getting out of that on my own was,

(Cassie sighs) it was awful. And it took me forever 'cause like there wasn't help out there for what I needed. Like, I would go to therapy every week, but it would just be me going, talking, being sad for an hour every week, and then going home and like, "What do I do now? How do I actually do life different? How do I change my behavior?" And, like, I

had tried cognitive behavioral therapy, I had tried ACT. The next thing I was going to try was dialectical behavioral therapy, but like my insurance wasn't gonna cover that, and so that wasn't an option for me. Like, what I needed didn't exist. And so now that I'm on the other side of it and I hardly recognize myself; it's bonkers, people; that's why I do what I do, 'cause I

want to be that source for those who are struggling the way I was struggling. Because doing that alone without support, let alone without like expert support, is so hard and awful and miserable. And you don't have to do it alone and you can get help. That's what I do. That's why I'm here. And I'm so grateful that I can do this; it is so fulfilling and so meaningful.

And even though I still deal with the spicy sads, 'cause that's never going away for me, the spicy sads, it's not a 24/7 thing anymore, it comes in waves. But I now have something really meaningful to help pull me out of it, and that is you, my precious Muses, because it is my mission to support all of you. So thank you. Thank you for letting me do what

I do. So I just finished my coaching call with my clients. It went about exactly an hour, and it was so wonderful. I love my clients so much. It was really rejuvenating. Like I had told you earlier while I was taking a break to be ready for that call, I was struggling with those ruts in the road of my brain that say, "Depression, depression, depression." So many false

beliefs come up from being in that head space. And there's like a lot of imposter syndrome, feeling bad about myself. I mean, I'm probably preaching to the choir; you don't need to hear me describe it. And every time I hop on a call with my clients, it lights me up, even if we're talking about hard things. You all are so precious to me, and I am so honored

that you trust me to help you along this journey. So I'm clocking out. My work day is over. It's been an interesting day. Had an awful night's sleep, like I talked about. Had a normal morning, really didn't have too much time to do work outside of calls because I had a lot of resting to do to be alive for this late call today. So in the grand scheme

of things, I really didn't do too much work today, but, and this is something that we actually talked about, the amount of time that you put in to whatever your work is, whether that'd be working for a job or work that's meaningful to you, or both, the meaning is not the one-to-one relationship to the time. You can get so much meaning out of a short amount of time.

You can get so much value out of a short amount of time. And we neurodivergent spoonies, because we have less time, energy, capacity, and often money than those who are able-bodied, neurotypical, mentally healthy, we have to be really intentional with how we spend that precious time and energy. And that's why I do what I do. I wanna empower my clients to be able to spend their precious time

and energy the way they want to. And that's entirely easier said than done. But when you learn how to do that for yourself, your life opens up in ways that you probably never thought was possible for you. I know that happened for me when I was doing this for myself back in the day and as I continue to do for myself to continue to grow my life in

ways beyond what I thought was possible for me. And I have now been doing this work with clients long enough that I see it happening for them, and it lights me up inside. I am so proud 'cause I can show the way, but they're the ones doing the work and opening their lives up for themselves. And anyways, I love what I do. It's been a rollercoaster of a

day. But I love what I do. And I'm really grateful that all of you make it possible for me to do this. So thank you. Talk to you soon. As you can see, that was a much more structured day. And once again, I'm curious, what are your biggest struggles on a more structured day like that? Let me know in the comments. There you have it. Two days in

the life of a neurodivergent spoonie business owner. I hope it was helpful. And let me know if you have any questions. If you're curious about my coaching, the main way I work with clients is through my signature course The Action Navigator. It's packed to the brim with tools and techniques for mastering your time, getting organized, and offering yourself radical compassion as a neurospicy spoonie. If that sounds like

exactly what you've been looking for, use this link to learn more. Check out these posts next on my minimalist time blocking setup and my bedroom office. If you liked this video, hit that like button and subscribe and be sure to share it with your friends. PS: For the new year, I'm going to be doing four videos in January, leading up to a free

workshop at the end of the month. Make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss it. See you then. Bye.