What Sickness Taught Me About Being A Full-Time Writer

The dark side of the content creator life no one talks about.

I’ll be honest. The last few months haven’t been easy.

My health was in shambles. I had fever and sore throat for about 20 days over the past 1.5 months. My immunity has suffered, I wasn’t able to work or workout, and I had no motivation to grow my business.

As a result, I wasn’t able to be consistent with my writing. 

Currently, the monthly earnings from my articles is one of my biggest income sources. Not publishing consistently made my income fall to almost 50% of my average. 

This hurt. When you’ve tied your sense of self-worth to how productive you are in your career, not making enough money can take a hit on your confidence.

That was a “my life is a lie moment” for me, something I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemies.

If you’ve been following my work for a while, you’ll know I glamorize the full-time writer life a lot. In many of my articles, I talk about how wonderful it is to be a solopreneur. You get to work on your own terms and can take time off for amazing holidays without anyone’s permission.

But there’s one thing very few people know about this way of life: you need to plan everything in advance.

Even while going on trips, I plan my content to the extent that if I disappear for 30 days, content will still be posted on my Medium, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube. Unplanned holidays are unthinkable for me. I need to work extra hard before and after each vacation I take, just so my posting schedule doesn’t get affected.

This is all well and good when you’re healthy and in the right mindset for working. But what about sickness? No one can plan to keep good health in account.