Sneezing Changed My Life (and Not in the Way You Think)

Before I became disabled, I did a little art. I even sold a little art. But I truly came into my identity as an artist after an injury left me with severe nerve damage that limits my mobility and leaves me bedbound most of the time. Oh, and it hurts like snot.

I get asked sometimes what I did before my first pinched nerve landed me in bed on September 18, 2018, at 3:14 am. Except people aren’t usually that specific with the question.

I always say that I was a writer, which is mostly true.

I was a writer. I wrote marketing content, most of which was boring as salt, for clients.

I wrote self help books for creative people, which I’m told were pretty good.

I was also a workaholic. I had a lot going on inside my head that I didn’t know how to deal with, so I worked. If I was working, I didn’t have to face it.

I thought I loved my work, and I thought I was happy, but I was really just busy. My to-do list had a to-do list. It was like Inception, but less fun and more Pepsi Zero

My now-adult kids say they didn’t mind, and we’ve always been close, but I wish I’d been around more. I wish I’d baked more cookies and watched more stupid movies and played more Candy Land.

I wish I’d understood that weekends aren’t just a suggestion from Big Calendar, and that “just four hours” after dinner stretched my work day to over 12 hours. I wish I’d lived a different life.

I was trying to recover from my workaholism before I got hurt. I took hiatuses, including one for two months. I limited my hours and projects, or at least I tried to. One year I took off Thanksgiving and the next day.

I took up painting and guitar. Well, I bought paints and a guitar. I painted and practiced sporadically. I enjoyed both. It’s just hard to have even one hobby when you’re constantly busy with work.

Then it happened. I’d been dealing with a herniated disc in my back for a while, and had been going to physical therapy for it.

Then, walking through the house in the middle of the night, I sneezed and pinched a nerve in the lumbar region of my back.

I knew I was in trouble. I just didn’t know how much trouble. There wasn’t a flashy neon sign that said, “Congratulations, you’re disabled.”

Turns out, I didn’t need to find work-life balance. Life went ahead and balanced me like a dropped plate.

I tried to work from bed, which was a disaster. I made plans for “when I get better.”

Yeah, about that.

After a while, lying in bed feeling sorry for myself got old. I needed something to do.

I bought a paintbrush washer so I didn’t have to get up from my art table, got help organizing my supplies, and started painting again.

The first day, I sat up way too long because I just lost myself. I don’t paint with my legs, so the fact that they don’t work very well didn’t matter. My back always hurts, but I forgot that for an hour.

When I paint, I’m not disabled. I can do anything I want with my paints. I’m just there, just painting.

I didn’t get the neon sign or the welcome to disabled life fruit basket, and I didn’t get a manual on how to live this life.

Fortunately, my brain craves creativity very much, and I’ve found ways to occupy myself even on bad days. Sometimes I just watch videos of other people making art.

The most important thing I do on a daily basis is stay present. Painting helps me do that. It gives me joy and peace and the ever-present something to do.

It also makes me feel like a badass artist even when everything else feels hard.

I’ve had a lot of years to get used to this life, and I can say with perfect honesty that my disability is one of the best things that ever happened to me.

I’m closer to my family. I’m not grinding away for hours at a time. I’m calmer, and when I listened to the scary noise in my head it went away. Those feelings just needed to be, you know, felt. They were only scary when they were bottled up.

Overall, in spite of the pain and limitations, I’m happier than I have ever been.

Some days, of course, are tough. But on bad days, I tell myself, “At least I don’t have to sit through another soul-sucking client meeting.” Small wins.