For those of us with a severe form of an illness we might need reasonable accommodations on the job to be able to do the job alongside others who don’t have functional limitations.

First talk with your pdoc about how to manage side effects of medication. As soon as I started taking the higher dose at night and tiny dose in the morning I was wide awake every single day without exception.

Before that I had to concoct an excuse for falling asleep during the day. The excuse was bought and an accommodation was given until a former friend suggested I ask my pdoc about changing the dose time to night.

Voila! I quickly no longer had side effects and was awake every day.

My point is: finding work in a quirky, creative environment might be a better option.

I famously joke that in the 1990s I made a career out of being professionally unemployed. I was laid off from four of the five jobs I had in only seven years.

While I was unemployed I took temporary work assignments because I was female and could type 75 WPM–a coveted speed. I had fast fingers on the keyboard so kept getting temp jobs in offices doing word processing.

I was a whiz at MS Word and Excel ever since 1995 when the DOS operating system was still around. Do you remember DOS?

Creating solo gigs for yourself in addition to a cheerful day job might be the way to go too. If doing what you love won’t net a lot of money to have extra things in addition to paying rent and utilities and your credit card in full every month–find a second job you can do on nights and weekends.

Going into debt isn’t necessary. Living within our means and even below our means is the way to go. Have on hand an emergency with as much money as you can fund it with to tide you over in a time of job loss, long-term illness, or other unforeseen expense.

Create an ABLE Account as your very first emergency fund.

I’m going in the next blog entry to talk about accommodations some more.