I am doing my best to consistently post videos so that I can build my You Tube audience, get monetized, and hopefully get some cross over sales in my Etsy shop. But my iron has been doing its best to make that impossible. In one month, my ferritin dropped nearly a hundred points taking my energy with it. Suddenly a task that took me 20 minutes, required 5 hours and a hundred rest breaks. Thanks to low iron levels, creating the shortest of videos feels like a 500-mile marathon.
Thanks to my ongoing battle with iron, I have found myself staring through fatigue and pain glazed eyes, asking myself why I insist on trying to accomplish anything. Questioning why this stubborn frog determinedly hits its head against the wall when it would be far more pleasant to sink into a comfy corner and let the world pass by.
But for some reason, even though that would be the easiest choice, it is not one I want to make. Even if my shop never takes off, even if no one ever watches my videos, I cannot imagine spending my life melted into the sofa with nothing but a flickering TV screen to show for my life. Sure, there are days, weeks, and even at times, months when the pain gets so strong that I have no choice but to limp along like a half-drowned snail. Unfortunately, there are days and weeks where the weakness and pain become so intense that the only thing I can do is open my computer and stare at the sales page for a few minutes wishing for a sale or watching the subscriber count hoping that the needle will move even one space higher, before closing the lid and comforting myself with the hopes that tomorrow will be a better day.
I am not sure why, when budget and health issues have seemingly conspired so perfectly that for every step forward it seems like I fall 10 steps backward, something inside of me refuses to give up. There are times, when I see how a You tube channel that was started only a few days before or even a couple of months after mine have thousands of subscribers and over a million views, or I watch a video talking about an Etsy shop that is only a couple of months old and already making hundreds of sales that I become so disappointed that a few times I have come close to throwing in the towel. But a day or two later, thanks to an unexpected like on one of listings or a new subscriber, and I am right back in the ring trying to fight that invisible Spector of chronic illness.
Even though it makes no sense, there is something inside those refuses to give up. Something inside that hopes that someday, somehow, something will change. And to my complete surprise, at last my determined effort to be as consistent as my never-ending battle with the giant anemia, the monsters pain and fatigue, will at last become a distant memory as I finally grasp my humble reward of earning my own bread.
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