Hi. I’m not in the same situation as you and I live 99.9% of the time at the other end of the scale than this but let me share some thoughts in the hope that they help.
Now, you’re in a tough situation, so it’s pretty reasonable to be set back by stuff like this, ok? I discovered my AVM when I was about 50 and I’m now about 60. Having life take a really shocking turn in your twenties is waaaay more difficult than it do that in your fifties. And I was lucky with my AVM: it hasn’t bled and I’ve got back to normal.
But as I stand at this end of the scale (nearly 60) my observations that I hope might help are mostly that life goes by remarkably quickly. I’ve retired, stopped work, let my qualifications dry out and no kids at home. That brings a challenge in possibly a similar way to you: what value is there to life? What am I doing? What can I do?
Your point about doing something that you enjoy is important: yes, there needs to be a modicum of activity in a week that is for you, that you enjoy doing, otherwise madness awaits!!
So I think my initial encouragement to you is that life is amazingly short: we only get one play of the game and we have to make of it what we can. With new limitations, try to think about what you could do that you might like to do. I don’t understand very much about what your limitations are but for example I used to work in IT. I was a very logically minded guy. I used to enjoy challenging problems and how to work them through with people to solve the problem with IT, or to fight with the technology to work out why it wasn’t doing what it was supposed to do. But that’s not all of me. Since retiring, the challenge I’ve set myself is to take on a bit of art: I’d say a completely different discipline than the mad, brain wrangling problem solving I used to do. OK, so art has its own madness… but I painted a portrait this week and you know what? It came out ok! It was simple in some regards but it came out ok and it flowed from the paintbrush much more freely than it did a year ago. I put a portrait into a local gallery just after Christmas and went to the exhibition to see what everyone else had painted and mine was one of the very few marked already as “sold”!
. It sold on opening night, apparently!!
I mean really?!
In what world does that happen?!
My point is, I got towards retirement and recognised that there needed to be something in the week that was for me. I decided that could be a bit of art. I’d never been good at art at school: I was a complete scientist rather than anything like an artist but I thought I’d give it a go and somehow I sold a picture last month!
So, don’t be constrained by what you’ve done before. Consider doing things that are different, that you could do, and see how you get on with one or two of those. It is important to get something out of the week for you but maybe don’t be constrained in your thinking as to what some of those things could be. It might be it takes you longer to do things than it did but that shouldn’t diminish the value of doing them.
So that’s my thought for today.
Lots of love,
Richard