All Side-Hustle Activities On Pause

Hi everyone,

I’m currently taking medical leave and stepping back from side-hustle activities to focus on my health. Unfortunately, this means I won’t be responding to collaboration inquiries at this time, and I’ve had to put my affiliate deals on pause.

Managing life with ADHD and balancing multiple jobs requires careful “traffic control” to maintain balance and prevent burnout. It’s not that I can’t handle stress, but I’ve learned the importance of setting boundaries to avoid preventable stressors. I think of this as using a “self-accommodation non-negotiable take-it-or-leave-it mental wheelchair” to navigate life with a severe disability.

My self-accommodations, such as taking extra rest days in a quiet, notification-free environment or using holidays for recovery, are essential to staying healthy and functional. I expect those close to me to respect these boundaries.

Uninterrupted work and sleep are crucial for my well-being, and I’ve built my business to align with my needs. This includes fully digital operations to ensure consistency, even during chronic illness flare-ups, and refusing to overextend myself to fit traditional expectations as I require many sleep buffers in my schedule and a flexible business (in addition to any plans that are easy to move around and cancel on a whim).

I’ve also learned to save vacation and personal days for emergencies to stay prepared without relying on others. For me, rest and recovery mean complete peace, quiet, and freedom from overstimulation. I only prioritize relationships that value emotional availability over constant presence, a necessary trade-off for focusing on legacy, self-care, and long-term stability. 

Expecting constant availability from someone managing disabilities (or expecting them to dim down how busy they truly are to extract or force non-existent time) is a boundary and personal space violation (trying to package disrupting my peace as being helpful in any manner is a one-way-ticket out of my life).

Expecting more time than someone has while pursuing dreams, and working two jobs is both unrealistic and cruel (we live in hyper stress mode already with a disability, there is no space for added tugs on bandwidth when there is a chronic illness that may require us to need more rest at the last minute and require extra buffers, so we calibrate our productivity output expectations accordingly). I won’t accept such expectations or tolerate anything that disrupts my mental peace just for speculative ROI when existing obligations need to be managed first and properly. And whoever thinks that they come before your ability to provide for yourself (the pre-requisites to your health which precede you providing for yourself) and building your future safety nets is the one with the problem.

Dedicated recharge time, free from interruptions (of any length, the very concept that ADHD cannot refocus after interruptions should be known by now), is essential for my ADHD to be in check as I end up suffering the consequences and my business is far more important to my joy, happiness, and future than what the wrong people and takers think of my self-accommodations (at least this way, it is done right).

ADHD means I cannot refocus after an interruption of any length, whether I am sleeping or working, so my time is not expendable and I have suppliers and contractors to pay, so coming back recharged and refusing to have my gym time hijacked away from shutting down my brain (that is alone time, point-blank) and knowing that what I share online and having a fundraiser in my time is enough is all that matters. The right clients will respect how and when I show up. I have also learned that anyone who has a problem with the fact that securing my future and providing for myself, despite having a disability, comes first is the one with the problem. Survival and health come first for me.

I am not interested in appeasing takers of my energy and resources that I work for day in and day out. They are not bringing me any value and since I have not chosen them as my charity of choice, I do not feel that I owe them anything. I am breaking the rules of traditional business structures because the last time I checked, there's nothing wrong with being an introvert with ADHD and owning it.

Pausing my business now is a necessary step toward sustainability and further digitization for the future. I’m grateful for your understanding and support as I prioritize my health and work toward creating a better balance via restructuring as much as I need to. I sell solutions, not my 1:1 time and that's who this brand is going to be right for in the end.

I’ll reconnect when the time is right and I appreciate everyone's understanding.

Warmly,
Karisa