On "flakiness"

And the horror of scheduling

Back in February, I agreed to do a writer’s talk about Floppy at a public library in a small town near me. I said yes immediately. I love libraries! They were scheduling almost a year in advance!

My decision was a buy-now, pay-later sort of situation, only with energy instead of cash.

Because who knew what my body would be up to in 10 months? I crossed my fingers and booked a late Saturday afternoon in December.

When I was younger, I had an extremely critical voice in my head that berated me for skipping events I’d made tentative noises about going to. Parties, picnics, bike parades. I pre-judged myself so it would hurt less when someone called me “flaky.”

Those days are over.

Now I don’t believe flakiness even exists. It’s an ableist slur, maybe. It’s a social optics problem, for sure. Not everyone is going to understand the need to prioritize a fragile physical balance, especially not in a system that’s set up to require everyone to “push through” just to survive.

Navigating unspoken expectations about your capacity can be one of the hardest things about invisible disability.

Anyway, when the agreed-upon author talk rolled around last weekend, I hadn’t been sleeping well. My energy was low, and my chronic pain was high.

Sometimes it’s dangerous to push myself when I’m in that kind of shape; sometimes I make the decision to do the thing anyway. Because I want to, or because it’s important enough.

Or because we scheduled 10 months in advance and I have a soft spot for small public libraries.

And, I mean, that’s fine! Limits have to be tested occasionally to see if they hold.

So I went and talked. The event itself was lovely—dark and rainy storytime vibes, cozy and nestled up near the picture books—but I did have to spend an extra day or two in recovery mode.

Anyway. That whole situation points to a bigger question.

With chronic illness, how do we make plans when we can’t predict our energy on a future date? How do we schedule things when our body’s capacity doesn’t sync with our scheduling app?

When I started coaching writers with chronic illness, I did not give this enough consideration.

I had…a comical number of last-minute reschedulings.

Back-to-back. Whole days in which it felt like all I did was reschedule sessions due to the infinite creativity of the human body to generate health crises.

It didn’t take long before I realized that scheduled, 1:1 Zoom sessions were not going to work.

And just to reiterate: I do not think these writers were flaky. Usually, it’s much more difficult to prioritize your body than to force yourself to show up. The forcing is the default we work hard to unlearn.

But the question for me became, how do I coach chronically ill writers when it’s impossible to schedule sessions? They still have passion for writing and important things to say. They still want support and feedback.

My solution? This year, I turned into a penpal. 

Minus the stickers, gel pens, envelopes decorated with hand-drawn butterflies. (Okay, my last bout of penpal enthusiasm peaked at age 12.)

Instead of meeting clients at specific times, I turned the coaching “sessions” into a series of back-and-forth emails over a span of 1-2 weeks.

And it worked!

The process is easier for me because I’m always showing up to people’s words and ideas with my freshest brain. If I have my own day of pain or brain fog, it’s no big deal. 

And it’s easier for the writers because all my feedback is written down. They can refer to it whenever they want, taking in suggestions at their own pace instead of worrying they won’t remember everything we talked about in one speedy hour. They have plenty of time to think of follow-up questions too.

The stress dialed down several notches. Writers are often more comfortable—surprise!—in writing.

So if you’re a writer who hesitates to schedule things because it’s a crapshoot as to whether you’ll be upright and coherent on some random future day, maybe penpal writing coaching is for you.

You pick the week we begin; we correspond in our own sweet time.

P.S. If you want to try penpal writing coaching in 2024, I’m offering 50% off a first session when you book by the end of December.