I’ve written on and off about illness and disability – it occasionally does show up in my stories.  So yeah, it will likely show up in games – I can pretty well be sure of that.  *G* Dwarves in Zagga know enough about neurology and medicine to have wheelchairs and so on, for instance.  It’s part of me, after all; I myself am disabled.

One thing I never learned well, though, was how to not work myself into the ground.  It caused at least one stroke – which in turn put me on disability.  That’s frustrating.

A nasty stomach bug hit our household this past weekend.  My husband got, as usual, a mild version; I was curled into a ball since late last thursday, not able to eat much at all without getting severely nauseous.

So yeah, I wasn’t able to work this weekend – but oddly it gave me some information.  I’ve been working on trying to learn time management, something neither my parents – my dad works from home as a translator and literally goes with a “till it’s done” mentality, which will keep him up till all hours at times – or my illness has ever allowed me to learn in the past.  So this month I’d started something new, setting myself a goal:  10 hours per week, no more than that.

What that means are a couple things:

For one, I now get to figure out what I’m doing the rest of the time; thus far I’ve found I can finish those 10 hours by Thursday, normally.

For another, it means I have time that yeah, I’ve discovered, I actually do need to recharge.  (This past weekend I was rather thankful for it, in fact… gods only know I couldn’t have worked if I tried, and today I’m taking it slow).

For a third, I don’t end up with “guilt time”.  Irrational or not, for YEARS I’ve lived with feeling terribly guilty if I didn’t get “enough” done because I was sick.  The definition of “enough” for me, though, was impossible to quantify.  But as of this month, I’ve gotten my 10 hrs/week in every week, and slowly felt less and less guilty afterward about having a few days off to do other things.  Nope, no worldbuilding, writing, or anything I’d consider work is allowed during such times – and after a bit I suddenly realized how much other stuff I COULD do other than that.

Next month I’m going to try for 15 hours/week; my end goal is about 20hrs/week for this.  I like this, the non-guilt feeling.  I’ve finally figured out that I can set myself a definition for “enough”.  Sick or well, I have that at last.