The Seated View

I started my own business because I couldn’t find a job anywhere else. I write and publish books and work as a freelance writer, specializing in health, disability and advocacy topics. I did this mostly because it’s my dream job. But I got here because no one would hire me. This despite being a pretty qualified person . A pretty qualified person with a disability, that is. The unemployment rate among people with disabilities is the highest of any group. This has a lot to do with barriers in the job market — a lack of physical accessibility, attitudinal barriers (employers see you as someone who can’t), rather than someone who can, transportation barriers, and so on. So why not start your own business? Well, not so fast. Just as there are barriers in the job market, people with disabilities encounter barriers when setting out to become entrepreneurs. Earlier this week I attended an iPolitics panel discussion on breaking barriers so that people with disabilit...

Did you miss it? In last week's Facebook Live for RAHealthCentral, I talked about how the ADA can help you work longer when you have a chronic illness, and how to apply for disability. I had a bad cold. Meaning I am woman, hear me squeak!  

One of the benefits of RA increasingly being an invisible illness is that you have a choice about whether you want your employer and colleagues to know about it. Sometimes, it's necessary, though. In my new post for HealthCentral, I take a look at the issues around disclosure: "You’ve just gotten a diagnosis of a chronic illness. You know you want to tell close family members and friends about it. But should you disclose at work? Let's look more closely at the issue of being open about chronic illness in the workplace. The legal side Human rights and anti-discrimination laws exist in the United States and in other countries, due to a long history of discrimination against people in the workplace because they're "different." Those differences can revolve around race, disability, gender, sexual orientation — the list goes on. In the U.S., the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) protects people with chronic illness and disability. I...

How very apropos! I am taking a leave of undetermined time from my job at HealthCentral to allow my body to recover fully before I do the work thing. And this is when my new post for Mango Health on the work-life balance with chronic illness was published: "It’s only been two months since I was discharged from the hospital after what I call a “medical adventure,” which included a lengthy stay in the ICU . Recovery is taking a long time, and although my energy levels are much better than they were, I still run out of steam fairly quickly. Any energy I have goes toward work in order to pay the bills. Suffice to say, that elusive concept of work-life balance is even harder for me these days. Balance, Schmalance Balance isn’t just about meeting your obligations at work and with your loved ones. It’s also about creating a life that makes you happy. If you’re lucky enough to have a job you love (I do!), it can fill up the need for happiness for a long time. And then so...

There are distinct benefits to working for yourself and even more benefits to having an office in your home. The commute is ideal, the dress code very relaxed, and you can set your own hours. This is fantastic when you have a chronic illness. There are also drawbacks. Recently, I’ve been forced to reevaluate how I work and manage stress (or rather, don’t manage stress) and I may have gotten a bit of perspective. First, I wrote down the factors that contribute to my stress levels being unreasonable: Multiple projects and roles . When you have 8 part-time jobs/roles/hats, some for pay, some not, it adds to a lot of balls to juggle. No space for writing and thinking . The hats require so much energy and time that there isn’t room for things I want to do. Such as write my next book. Or having quiet time to think (also required for writing). Multitasking . Lots of competing deadlines and massive influx of email. This doesn’t actually get more done. Instead, I flit from ta...

September is Arthritis Awareness Month in Canada . As part of this, I'm doing a series of posts about initiatives by different organizations. The common theme of these will be dealing with the topic of working when you live with arthritis.   Earlier this month in Making It Work , I wrote about the Arthritis Research Centre of Canada's study of a self-management program to help people with arthritis stay employed or become employed again. Last week, in Fit for Work , I wrote about The Arthritis Society’s work to help employers develop guidelines and recommendations to accommodate employees with arthritis. Both of these programs are works in development that will lead to better conditions for those of us who live with one of the 100 different kinds of arthritis. But what might those conditions look like? As I've shared briefly a few times, Show Us Your Hands! has spent a significant portion of this year re-examining how the Directors’ inflammatory arthritis affect...

September is Arthritis Awareness Month in Canada . As part of this, I'm doing a series of posts about initiatives by different organizations. The common theme of these will be dealing with the topic of working when you live with arthritis.   Living with arthritis — whether osteo or inflammatory — can be an all-consuming situation. Everything you do is marked by your disease and sometimes, it can give you a bit of blinders. You spend so much time focusing on making your life work that it can be hard to think in broad strokes. Here are some of those larger facts: Over 4.6 million Canadians live with arthritis. The annual economic cost of arthritis in Canada is $33 billion. In a recent study, fully one third of respondents indicated they stop working because of arthritis. Makes it very real, doesn't it? The study I mentioned above was commissioned by The Arthritis Society and further analyzed by the Arthritis Community Research and Evaluation Unit (ACREU), w...

I took August off from my job as Community Leader for HealthCentral.com's RA site and a few other things. This cut my workload in half and I discovered something revolutionary. I work too hard. Now, before you experience ocular whiplash from rolling your eyes too hard — because this factoid has been in the obvious to everyone who knows me for some time — let me explain. You start doing something, then you add a little something else, a few hours more over here and gradually, it becomes a very large hill of stuff. But you don't notice, because the increase has been incremental, every task sneaking in quietly and entirely doable. And because it has moved slowly, you don't notice how bad it was until you stop. It’s like the story that claims if you put a live frog in water and very gradually heat it up, the frog won't jump out because it won't notice that the water’s starting to boil. I was that frog. Taking a month off from being in hot water ...

September is Arthritis Awareness Month in Canada . As part of this, I'm doing a series of posts about initiatives by different organizations. The common theme of these will be dealing with the topic of working when you live with arthritis.   The Arthritis Research Center of Canada is a very cool nonprofit organization. For one, they’re the creators of the banner, marking and Arthritis Awareness Month in Canada. They're asking that you use this banner on your Facebook page, blog or anywhere else to help raise awareness throughout September.  Last week, I talked to Pam Rogers, Research Coordinator with the ARC, about an exciting new study called Making It Work. But first, a bit of background… Created in the year 2000, the ARC’s mission is to perform research on all aspects of arthritis. The research is consumer-driven, focusing on quality of life issues, care outcomes and more. The ARC has a Consumer Advisory Board of individuals who all live with differen...