How should those of us who cannot function properly in society work?

This is about how I started my publishing work and my question, "How are people who have difficulty working normally due to physical or mental health issues supposed to live?" Finally, I also include plans for publishing several books to answer this question.

It didn't happen because of some cool backstory.

Since the beginning of this year, I have been running a publishing label called Shiroi Books.

About two months ago, I just released my first book, "A Guide to Continuing and Improving Musical Instruments for Working Adults," and I am currently working on the publishing process while writing the manuscript for my second book, "Does an Answer Exist for Investment?" (which is currentlyavailable for free preview on note). Naturally, this kind of work doesn't make money right away (Royalties? They're tiny!!), so I feel I need to work hard and build it up.

If you're wondering why I, an engineer with a science background, ended up writing books and working in self-publishing, it's due to my own health issues. Simply put, I don't have the robust body or mental health to work as a full-time employee at all.

This has been the case since I first started working after graduation. The most I can continue working normally every day is a year or two, or three if I push myself. After doing that much, my mind and body are completely burned out, I suddenly become unable to go to work, and I end up bedridden for half a year or even a full year without a second thought.

This "being bedridden" is not an exaggeration. After working for a little over a year as a new graduate, when I first became unable to go to work, I spent about a full year doing nothing but sleeping and waking up. After that, things got a little better, and I remember that even after my mind and body broke down, I would often recover enough to lead a daily life outside of work in a few months, but well, my twenties were filled with such barren days.

People often say, "I can't stand working 8 hours a day, 5 days a week." But everyone says that while still enduring it, right? You're managing, aren't you? I, without any joke, cannot do that. I don't know why I can't. I also don't know why some people can.What is wrong with everyone?

So, I decided to work on writing books individually. This wasn't due to a clear determination; at first, it was just a situation where "the only thing I can do alone while my health is poor is to write text on the internet." As I continued to write on blogs and such, my goal as a professional, "I want to become a writer," rather than just a hobbyist activity, gradually became clearer, and that's how it happened.

This is quite a bold change in career path. If I was originally a systems engineer, I could have gone freelance as the same professional. In fact, that would have been a more sensible and solid idea. However, I have repeated taking leaves of absence and resigning due to poor health in my engineering work for over 10 years, and I have come to truly hate engineering work from the bottom of my heart. I never want to do it again. Even though I used to love it so much.

As stated in my self-introduction article, "A person like Shiroi," I have always liked "doing things myself," such as being an amateur indie game developer, working full-time in stock investment, and performing live in front of people after starting to play musical instruments. The fact that I am now summarizing my thoughts into books individually and doing everything myself, including cover design and publishing work, is similar.

In the end, if my mind and body are weak, I am bad at living in sync with others, and I can't feel at ease unless I do everything myself, I feel that this might have been a kind of inevitability.

My daily work and routine

Writing is a completely individual endeavor, so deciding how to use my time every day is also my job. I am free to spend my time idly without making much progress, but if I do that, the results will all come back to me in the form of income, so I basically don't have the option of just slacking off.

I am a morning person, and I walk for about 40 minutes every morning to a Doutor Coffee shop that serves as my workplace, making the time between 7:30 and 11:00 my main working hours. I choose a large shop where I don't seem to be a bother even if I stay for a long time, and it's convenient that I can freely get water myself. I hardly take any breaks during those three and a half hours. This is probably not very good, but it seems that I can only concentrate in that way.

When I return home at noon, I make it a requirement to take a one-hour nap after lunch. Without this, I wouldn't be able to stay awake properly in the afternoon. However, it's not like my physical strength and concentration recover well from a nap, and whether I can do proper work at home in the afternoon depends on my physical condition that day. If I'm in good shape, I can continue writing from the morning a little bit, and on the other hand, there are days when I can only do trivial tasks that don't require much brainpower. Days when I can't even do that are not rare, so I basically try not to expect to be able to do anything fruitful in the afternoon.

As for my daily routine outside of work, I take a 30 to 40-minute walk in the evening (this makes it about 10,000 steps combined with the morning), and I let my pet bird, Fumiko, out of the cage to play at noon and in the evening. At night, my lights-out time is extremely early, and I turn off the lights and lie down around 19:00. This is because I don't have the physical strength left to stay upright at night, and my brain doesn't work well enough to read.

I take holidays on Saturdays, Sundays, and public holidays as per the calendar, so I spend Monday through Friday in almost the same way. For now, this seems to be the only way I can manage to work.

I want to share wisdom for people like us to survive

The title of this article contains the phrase "how should we work." However, this is more of an expression of my own question as written at the beginning, and I will not be writing a concise and direct answer of "you should do this" in this article.

Since I have gone to the trouble of starting a label called Shiroi Books and decided to operate under the philosophy of "providing books to make life better," I have come to think that "writing know-how for people who struggle with this type of life difficulty is also a job given to me." Therefore, I would like to compile this theme into several books.

I'm sorry if you thought, "Wait, is this just a book promotion in the end?" For someone like me, my daily feelings and arguments are integrated directly into my work. Writing a book is a considerably difficult task, so unless it is something I believe is worth doing, I cannot see it through to the end.

Now, regarding the future publications I am planning with that in mind, I am currently conceiving the following three books on the topic of life-related issues, similar to what I wrote about in this note. All titles are tentative.

• How to Create Meaning in Life: Lessons for Happiness and Self-Esteem

• A Survival Guide for People with Developmental Disabilities and Mental Illness: From Money Worries to Affirming Life

• A Book for Getting By Even If You Are Bad at Human Relationships

Directly speaking, the book for people with physical and mental weaknesses like me will be the second one, "A Survival Guide for People with Developmental Disabilities and Mental Illness." I am assuming the specific reader to be someone who has developmental disabilities such as ASD or ADHD as a base and has developed secondary disabilities like depression while trying to adapt to society, but I intend to make it a book that can also be useful to people with other mental illnesses or feelings of difficulty in living.

Also, since human relationships are the first thing that comes to mind as workplace stress, the third book, "A Book for Getting By Even If You Are Bad at Human Relationships," is also related to the theme of work and physical and mental health.

Furthermore, regarding the first book, "How to Create Meaning in Life." Since this deals with the fundamental question of "What is the meaning of a life that is just plain hard?", it is also related to the content I wrote about in this note. I don't think there are many people whose work is not difficult, and I don't think there are many people who can say, "My life has such wonderful meaning!" in the midst of such days.

The book "How to Create Meaning in Life" aims to provide some clues to that, and since I have chosen the job of writing, it is one of the books I really want to write.

As for Shiroi Books' plans, I am also planning books related to music, but I believe the three books mentioned above are the ones I strongly want to deliver to readers.

Regarding the immediate publication schedule

For now, I plan to publish "Does a Correct Answer Exist in Investing?," which I also mentioned at the beginning of this article, by June. This will be the second book from Shiroi Books.

For the third book, I am planning "How to Create Meaning in Life," which I mentioned earlier. I hope to be able to publish this within 2024, which is this year.

Furthermore, I would like to write "A Survival Guide for People with Developmental Disabilities and Mental Illness" and "A Book for Getting By Even If You Are Bad at Human Relationships" one after another, but after all, I only have one body to write these. In terms of workload, I am thinking it will be a 2025 publication.

So, this note started with the topic of my personal health problems and was about my desire to write books for people who have similar worries. I hope to continue writing various things on this note about publishing, as well as about the topics of struggling physical and mental health and ways of living.

I hope to continue delivering topics that you can enjoy reading, know-how that is useful for living life, and issues that make you stop and think. I would be happy if you could continue to support me.

Some time after that... (Added in April 2025)

This article was written in April 2024, but from here on is the part added a full year later.

Strangely, perhaps because the title or some part of the text is hitting some search keywords, this article has constant access every month, which makes me feel strange. Thank you for reading this far.

Regarding "How to Create Meaning in Life," the subtitle has been changed and publication is now complete as shown below. A "preview version" is also available, so if you would like to read some of the content, please check it out there.

For other latest information, please check the top page of Shiroi's note. See you!

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From the "Living Better" articles

• Why do people stop drawing pictures when they become adults? (2023.12.9)

• Didn't you also have a time when you were full of hope? (2023.12.30)

• Effort is triggered by circumstances (2024.6.1)

Other

• Prototypes: The Original Form of Arguments (on the official Shiroi Books website)