• Feeling Useless
• Feeling Bored
• Having a Low Self Esteem
• Focusing on Your Disability
• Believing that You are Worthless
• Feeling Like a Non-Productive Person
• Feeling Dependent

These are some of the issues that people with disabilities may deal with if they are no longer working or have never worked. It is often discussed that when a man loses his job, he loses part of his identity. I believe this is true for women too as you’ll see in my situation.

I fought to remain working when I was very sick with two chronic illnesses. I was working three jobs at the time, one full time and two part time. I also was an active volunteer. I lived a full life. I decided to stop working one part time job, then another, thinking that having only one job would ease my difficulties with working. But I would work, barely eat and then sleep. I repeated this every day with no time for my family, church, volunteering or for me.

My doctors said that it was best to stop working as my medical condition was not improving. I reluctantly gave in. After that I ended up in a deep depression. I remember describing myself as a "lump" or "slob". In my mind, not working was a sign of weakness or sponging off of someone and off of society.

As I began to have some good days, I decided to go online and learn about eBay. I actually did this for my husband as we were hurting financially. The more I learned though, the more I thought I could do this. I joined a non-profit group that helps people with all types of disabilities how to sell on eBay. This group is called Disabled Online Users Association or DOUA.

In the beginning my husband had to help me with many aspects of selling. I was still too weak to do it on my own. But as time went on and with the support and information from DOUA I learned how to save time and energy with selling. I really didn’t make a lot of money but it was fun and something to look forward to. While becoming more active online I then learned about paid blogging .

Working at home has helped me to regain the confidence I lost in myself. I still fight the urge to put myself down and to worry over mistakes I’ve made. It does take me a while to learn new things. I often forget the things I’ve learned and have to re-learn them. The blogging community has strong bonds. I often get help from other bloggers when I need it. I sometimes have days where I can’t work or even get out of bed. Since paid blogging is something I do on my own terms, that isn’t a problem.

I have gone back to volunteering since I began working from home. I help at my daughter’s school, at my church and on DOUA . I now feel that I contribute to society again. I’ve used my blogs to help others with disabilities and chronic illnesses so I also give back.

Many people with disabilities don’t know that there are legitimate ways to earn money. When I told my caseworker at Social Security about what type of work I am doing (blogging) I asked her if there was some place that she or I could pass the information on to. She wasn’t interested. So I use my website and blog to spread the word. Hopefully this blog post will do the same.

Tags: confidence, diabled, disabilities, eBay, paid blogging, work from home

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