When I moved to London in 2024, it was the end of my digital nomad era. For the three and a half years prior, I had been travelling to new cities or new countries every month, finding a new air bnb and working from it. This was obviously awesome in many ways, but it had its faults - one of which being that I was so lonely and isolated in my everyday life, especially when I was in a country that I didn’t speak their language.
I remember being in Marseille and the only words I spoke aloud for an entire week were “bonjour” and “merci” and “avec cart”. At the time, it was early into SEO bitch and these experiences were part of why I began offering free consultations. I know, shock horror, the free sessions aren’t entirely altruistic, in fact, I was using you for human contact. Sorry! I exchanged it for useful information about SEO, I prommy!
But anyway, one of the other parts that sucked about being a digital nomad was that it was difficult to build on any of my skills. Pole dancing, to be exact, was one of the hardest things to consistently improve, as the amount of local pole studios would vary from place to place, as would the quality and price, and my confidence in going to new places all the time (very low).
So, when I moved to London, I decided to go consistently to pole classes and improve my skills. This took a little getting used to - finding a local studio, who had teachers I liked, then having to readjust while those teachers moved away. Ironic, that after committing to find consistency and not leave, I was left.
Anyway, I found that consistency and I was able to go frequently, at least once a week if not more. I also talked a friend in Berlin into finding studios, and we went together when I was there.
I’d been doing pole off and on for like, seven years up to this point, and had never been able to get a particular skill - an invert. This is basically holding onto the pole and deadlifting your entire weight up, bringing your butt above your head so that you’re upside down. This takes a lot of strength across the whole body, but also particularly in the shoulders. I worked on the skill and finally got it, for a beautiful day, then immediately lost it. It felt like I was losing my power, losing my strength, despite the fact that I was consistently working on it. Defeated, I gave up, took a break from pole and sulked.
Then, a few months later, my shoulder exploded. The worst pain that I've ever felt in my entire life, which to be fair has been pretty easy going, but still, it felt like my shoulder was giving birth to my whole arm, constantly. This was enough time after stopping pole that I didn’t connect the two things, instead blaming my static positioning working at a desk, as well as my other hobbies - knitting and crocheting.
Upon talking to a physio, I was diagnosed with a torn rotator cuff, given physio exercises and told to apply heat. Weeks went past, and it got worse and worse - I was downing pain meds like candy, and knew this wasn’t sustainable. I went for an ultrasound, was diagnosed with both a rotator cuff issue as well as bursitis - the cure for which was rest, cold and compression - very different to the instructions I’d been given earlier.
With this diagnosis, at least, I started to heal. I’m not better: I still can only sit up straight for a short amount of time and if I lean forward, my whole arm goes numb. But I can work, and I will heal.
What made me angriest about this whole situation wasn't the pain. It wasn’t the misdiagnosis. It was the fact that I had done my best and tried so hard to improve myself, committing to pole dancing, and this is what had caused my problems. It turns out I have hypermobility in my shoulders and as such, pole is the single worst thing I can do for the muscles in there. Without proper guidance the muscles don’t react the same way as normal ones, or something, and pole just fucked me up.
I guess my point is that I tried to improve myself, and it broke something in me. This was devastating, and really demotivating. It will take me probably a year to get any amount of strength back in my shoulder, and even then, I would be starting from scratch learning and training the muscles for a new way of doing pole. And, with this amount of pain, I'm not sure it’s worth the risk. I can’t deal with this again.
Sometimes we try our best and we fail. That doesn’t mean we were wrong to try, it means that we were brave enough to do it. But we don’t always get everything we want just because we try.
This I feel relates to SEO because, sometimes, it doesn’t work. There have been times when I have done everything I can think of to optimise a website, or used all my Faire SEO skills, and still failed at making an improvement to overall sales. This is the risk - a similar risk to investing in advertising, social media, or any type of marketing, really.
What if you fail? Is that worse than never trying? What is the cost? Sometimes, the cost is money. Sometimes you hurt yourself. But I don’t regret anything, I probably would have busted this shoulder doing something else stupid, and for that one glorious day, I could invert.
