As someone who lives right on the border of severe ME/CFS (I can putter around my house a bit, but not much more than that--leaving the house for an IRL appt is an all-day expense)
I think it's helpful to explain that: some tasks are always costly, some are "free", others' cost depends on the day.
2 - live posting
3 - making meds boxes
2 - dishes, laundry, tidy (so tomorrow buddy can help with further neglected tasks I can't do myself even on good days)
1 - write some neglected emails to friends/fam
1 - if I really have 9 in the the tank today: watch my weekly Katharine Hepburn movie, a treat
I had hoped listening and typing would be free today, especially if I was strictly lying down to do so,
but it's clear I'm not fully recovered from the toll that an entire week's worth of fireworks-disrupted sleep had taken on me.
That's when I realized I indeed had to take it out of my "pomodoro" energy budget for the day, and that I wouldn't be able to participate as much as I would have liked to.
It's hard! It's hard to constantly be telling yourself "no" for the simplest activities. It's grief work, all the time.
Each day I look at how good my sleep was (per my Oura ring) and decide how many pomodoros I budget for myself that day.
I then plan how I'm going to spend them. Sometimes I get it all done, sometimes I have to tap out early, sometimes I'll swap something unexpected in for something else
I even have to do this with fun activities (like watching a movie) because even watching tv isn't "free" for me
A five minute conversation in the backyard with a friend can maybe be close enough to free. Quickly standing to heat a premade meal and sitting back down is difficult, but also "free-ish"
(In the sense that just doing that quickly three times a day is, while not exactly free, sort of a rounding error compared to an overall day's effort that I don't specifically account for it.
But tbh maybe I should--have one pomodoro set aside for things like brushing teeth, heating meals, etc)
Writing in my journal is free, when I can sit up, which isn't always. I can write as slowly as I need to.
I don't really have many free tasks.
But someone who's not quite as sick might have more.
And because ME/CFS fluctuates, what's free for me changes from day to day.
