So one of the most frequent questions I get, is how do I work at a computer all day and avoid eyestrain, which is something people with chronic fatigue can be especially susceptible to, especially given our sensitivity to bright lights. And the answer is: I don’t. Working at my desk all day every day absolutely hurts my eyes, and makes me more prone to migraines and profound exhaustion which if I’m not careful can put me out of action for several days.
I do manage to limit how often this happens though by making sure I take care of myself, and this includes things like taking regular breaks from the screen to rest my eyes, using a screen dimmer like “night mode” constantly (comes as standard with Windows 10, might also be in other versions but I don’t remember) or a program like Flux which
adapts to the time of day, warm at night and like sunlight during the day, so that looking at your screen isn’t like staring into the sun at 3 in the morning. I also make sure my prescription for my glasses is up to date, and also wear glasses that have a special UV filter that gives everything a bit of a yellow tint to soften the light. Some people say they work, some people don’t. I’m someone who is particularly sensitive to light, and I have found the slight yellow tint to be beneficial to my eye health.*
But even doing all these things, opening Word can absolutely feel like you’re searing your retinas off when you open up the document and the white expanse of doom takes over your entire screen, like this:
This right here? Makes my myopia extremely pronounced in my right eye, and makes the visual floaters that I get extremely hard to work with. There are days when it feels like all I can see are those little black squiggles over my vision, and the white screen is absolutely to blame, even with all those other measures in place. (I have absolutely worn sunglasses indoors to get around using software that only lets me use a white screen.)
And it’s been brought to my attention in answering lots of questions about eye health and managing my symptoms, that some of you are not aware that Word doesn’t have to be like this, when it can in fact be like this:
And it is so much better for you. I mean it doesn’t have to be this specific color setting, you can play around with it and find the color setting that doesn’t hurt your eyes or trigger migraines/makes it easier for you to read and follow text, but I have found dark grey and blues to be what works best for me, and the way you change these settings is to first of all go into File > Options > General and then changing the Word theme from “Colorful” to “Dark Grey”
Which will give you this look:
And for some people that will be enough of a reduction in white screen to help with eyestrain and other problems, but if you are like me and the bright white is just playing havoc with your vision/processing, you can go up to the Design tab (it’s between Insert and Layout usually) and change the color of the text file page:
Like so:
Like I said, dark greys and blues work best for me, and this is what manuscripts look like when I am reading them for work, but you can totally play around with it and find what works for you, and hopefully help yourself avoid some of that “oh god my eyes feeling” that happens from staring at the blank white page for hours on end before you alt out the tab and pull up tumblr instead.
Anyway, hope that helps some of you? Good luck? Don’t hurt yourselves unnecessarily? Go take a break from your screen right now and get something to drink? idk, just take care. You deserve to.
Finding adequate pain management is difficult, especially with so many doctors becoming reluctant to help chronic pain patients thanks to the scare mongering over opioids at the moment, so in every literal sense, I feel your pain and I sympathize.
For me pain management is tricky as I react so negatively to medications, but if you do not have a pain specialist already, try and find one and see if there’s anything else they can do for you, or if there’s a med tweak that might help.
My biggest pin relief comes from weekly massage and physical therapy, without it I get acid build up in my muscles and it starts to feel like I have shards of glass under my skin. Not all insurances cover it (mine doesn’t) but it can be extremely beneficial for those of us with chronic pain. It can hurt a lot at first, particularly things like deep tissue massage, but if you start out gentle and work your way up it can really help with things like circulation and muscle spasms or breaking up painful adhesions that might be the cause of some pain. Plus it can just feel good to take a time out and stop carrying extra tension in your body all the time.
Acupressure, reflexology and basic therapeutic massage are all great ways at lowering inflammation and stress levels, and that can go a long way toward helping your pain.
Another thing I started doing this year was cognitive behavioral therapy for chronic pain management. The therapy itself doesn’t lessen the pain, but it does give me a better mentality for coping with it, which in turn helps with my stress levels and how well I’m able to manage it. People have noticed more and more recently that I’m enforcing stricter boundaries online with how far I’m willing to go in order to help or explain something, and this is a huge part of it. I’m also doing it in real life, and have cut out a lot of toxic and draining people who made demands on my time and energy that I simply don’t have to give. I’m always telling folk never to set themselves on fire to keep other people warm, and by golly gosh it’s high time I took my own advice cause if my mental health is shot to pieces, I can’t cope and I’ll just lay in bed and cry and cry and cry because everything hurts so much all the time. If I’m in a better place mentally, I’ve got more energy reserves to cope. It doesn’t make the pain any less, but it does help me not to fall into a pit of despair every time I have a flare up.
I also always try to take the time to do something nice for myself, whether it’s making sure I get my haircut every six weeks to keep down on maintenance, enjoying a nice bath or letting myself go to bed early to read a book, I make active time to treat myself with kindness and to do something out of enjoyment and not obligation. So much of my energy is rationed in terms of trying to have a functional life, it can feel like such a waste of energy to just do something that you’ll enjoy, and that’s just not true. Tonight was our anniversary and I wanted to feel fancy so I used a wine glass to drink my water with. Sounds ridiculous, but it made me feel special and normal for a split second out of a thousand moments of feeling like crap. Be kind to yourself and allow yourself small joys. They add up.
I appreciate you answering! I’ll try CBT out because I have noticed that when my mental health is bad it gets a lot harder to endure and they add on to eachother making the mental problems and the physical pain worse. I’ve been trying to figure stuff out with my doctor but he is a bit unsympathetic so I’m in the process of trying to get a new doctor. I might try acupressure as well thanks for the suggestion! I appreciate it a lot, I’ve been dealing with various issues for a while and reading your blog posts about getting better and healing helps give me hope.
You are so very welcome. When I first started blogging I could hardly ever find anyone who was dealing with my types of issues, and that feeling of isolation alone was unbearable. I never wanted anyone to feel like that, so I’m glad to know that me talking about these things helps. It makes living in the public eye somewhat more bearable lol.
If you wind up struggling with CBT or find it doesn’t help, another thing I’ve been using to great effect is EMDR. It was initially supposed to just be helping with my PTSD but we’ve actually found through trial and error that it’s very good with helping to deal with the stress of always being in pain, so that’s another option.
Good luck, and I wish you great progress on achieving a better quality of life💖
you’re going from one extreme environment to the polar opposite, and that is gonna throw you at first.
high school:
every minute of the day scheduled
immediate penalties for missing class
need permission to go to the bathroom WTF
your movements/behavior strictly enforced with punishment systems
you’re forced to interact with teachers and classmates
small assignments over short periods
basically bullied by the administration into obeying arbitrary rules
college:
you can show up late. it’s a jerkwad thing to make a habit of, but you can do it
YOU CAN FUCKING SKIP CLASSES WTF. most professors don’t take attendance. I missed soooooo many classes. use good judgement or your grades will suffer
DONT NEED PERMISSION TO GO TO THE BATHROOM. or leave class early. you can just, literally walk out? on bad mental health days I found it helpful to like, leave in the middle of class and spend 10-15 min resting. and then walking back in. (but be careful not to disrupt the class. I mostly did it when there was a back exit.
No Body Cares About Almost Anything. Dress code what’s that? u wanna wear a bikini to class, you can. a unicorn onesie? go ahead. randomly burst into parkour while walking to class? it’s whatever. you can literally (in the short term) get away with so much shit, and so many bad choices. no more demerits or detention or suspension
very little accountability/punishment, but the few rules they do enforce come at a huge cost if u get caught (these things are also arbitrary)
big part of your grade can be large end-of-term essays/assignments. you get to put it off andoff and no one holds you accountable…. until the grades come in. (I’ve failed more than one class this way)
you have to consistently self monitor or you’ll end up putting work off until way to late
No one’s stopping you from making bad choices. or even telling you not to. usually the opposite really. pay attention to your choices.
high school forces you (unsustainably) into study routines but without teaching you how to do it without external pressure. That framework collapses super quickly. you’re going from one ridiculous extreme to another, you’re gonna end up overindulging & being irresponsible bc
you couldn’t until now
your brain is trained to weigh consequences/rewards in the short term
you’re exhausted from high school
it feels like everyone else is doing it
my GPA bombed in college, I was not prepared. my advice comes from only my experiences, but check the notes, I’m sure my followers have loads to offer. off the top of my head:
look for stablizing influences
no seriously choose your friends wisely, their bad habits will become yours. college students tend to function in herds.
join study groups. for most classes. do it.
FREE TUTORING THERE’S FREE TUTORING TAKE ADVANTAGE
make friends with the TAs, go to them for homework help. you can like, ask them about a specific question and they’ll walk you through it.
as s freshman, maybe don’t sign up for classes with large term projects.
always check ratemyprofessor.com before enrolling in a class. it won’t always tell you much but it can give you huge red flags.
you can change your class schedule super easily for maybe 2 weeks. use that.
you can actually basically avoid talking to the professor the entire semester. DONT do this. be careful about self isolating
ASK FOR HELP ASK FOR HELP ASK FOR HELP. professors can actually be really accommodating if you explain you’re struggling with adjusting, mental health, deadlines.
MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES. USE THE STUDENT HEALTH SERVICES.
just make a (free!) appt w/ any therapist. it’s amazing and you don’t need parent permission. do it at the start of of the semester, before you start struggling. this is s fantastic prevention tool
last thing: if you’re a white dude be careful not to talk too much in class it’s a Thing)
related note: don’t take philosophy
tell your mom I’m having a good day and I said hi!
Imagine going to a party and the white suburban stay at home mom with two overachiever kids and white dad who barbeques but doesn’t know how to barbeque and yet is always surrounded by other white Dads who compliment his barbqeuing even though they’re just store bought preshaped frozen patties from Ralph’s or Food 4 Less and while he’s cooking those the white mom comes out and says “okay kids, here’s some pizza!” And she pulls this out and starts telling the kids why its a “fun pizza” and then cries in her master bedroom when no one likes it or finishes it and the white dad is then consoling her why she sobs that she’s a terrible mother and ruined her fourth grade straight B+ sons birthday and thinks her kids hate her but they don’t care but she continues crying softly into her pillow while the children eat poorly cooked burgers with unmelted kraft singles and too much mayonnaise and the only other condiments are two pickles and pepper because the dad calls it his special burger with a secret spice but the spice was just pepper and the kids just keep playing E rated games on their Nintendo Wii while the 17 year old older sister starts cleaning the tragedy up and throwing away uneaten “fun pizza” and whole burgers dejected from the start while she dials Pizza Hut to get these kids an actual birthday lunch and the mother then throws a fit because the daughter did something the kids liked and she didn’t and was the only one making a huge deal out of it and the daughter was then grounded from her TV in her room for only two days and the son went to blow out the candles in his standard birthday cake from food 4 less the mom added strawberries to so she could feel she did something but was still slightly teary and sad because her day was ruined by no one wanting to eat her “fun pizza”
Mom is doing her best trying to get actual nutrients into her kids but has been fooled by Pinterest moms who raised their kids on fresh fruit into believing the “fun pizza” will work and she knows she failed and hates herself and once her babies are in bed she will console herself with prosecco and/or pink gin to fill the gaping chasm in her life.
I’m here for that deluded mom she needs help and hugs x
There are at least 4 ingredients on that fun pizza that will guarantee that I will have a not-so-fun time.
*morgan talking about her family on a school presentation*
this is my mom, a boss™️, and this is my dad, iron man™️, and this is my space big sister nebula, and this is her big sister gamora, they have a ship and a super cool tree friend and talking raccoon, and this is my big brother harley, and this is my younger big brother peter, they are really smart, as i am of course, i am a stark™️, and this is my uncle happy, he likes this old show he watches in tv because he thinks it’s elegant, i think it’s boring; this is my uncle rhodey, he’s military royalty and has a super cool suit like my daddy’s, this is my aunt may, she’s super sweet and italian and it’s my brothers aunt, this is my aunt carol, she glows and has a cat who i love and this is also my uncle nicky, i don’t know how he lost his eye, but he likes aunt carol’s cat a lot; anyway-”
pepper doesn’t know how to explain the teacher and parents in the classroom
I didn’t know Chris Evans appearing behind Cap’s shield with his costume on and singing “Another One Bites The Dust” is what I needed in my life.Thank you Hayley Atwell!
