If you read the previous post to this one, you’ll know it was a loooong time ago 🤔
Three years and five months. That’s how long it’s been since my last post went up on Internet Bling.
Returning to blogging after that long feels a bit strange. But you deserve an explanation, so here it is.
Liverpool
When I wrote that last case study in January 2023, I was living up in Liverpool in the Northwest of England, working for an ecom company. I honestly loved my time up there. At our peak we were turning over close to half a million pounds a month. Fast, intense, and genuinely some of the best laughs I’ve ever had. Working there was fun as hell. I met and worked alongside brilliant people up in that city, and I’m still proud to call them close friends. We speak regularly to this day.
Eventually things didn’t work out job wise. The role ended. And I’d had South-East Asia on my mind for a while anyway, so when things finished up North, I took the money I’d banked and bought a flight to my favourite country in the world…
Thailand: May 2023
I landed in Bangkok in May 2023 with a plan. Looking back now, the plan was absolute madness.
A bit like their traffic, you could say 😀
Some context first. I’ve been dealing with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) since 2019. As I write this, I’m in year eight of being sick. It really sucks. I’m in a much better place now than I was back then, but in 2023 I was still pretty damn ill. Not “a bit tired” ill. The real, debilitating, put you in bed for days at a time kind.
In Liverpool I had a free apartment as part of the job. The second I landed in Bangkok, I had to make rent. Plus everything else that comes with living independently in a foreign city. Savings started draining from day one and the pressure to earn money built fast.
The problem with CFS and pressure is that this combo causes crashes. If you’re not familiar – a crash is what happens when you push too hard with this illness. You spiral down fast, get a lot of pain, and end up back in bed, sometimes for days, or even weeks if the crash is a bad one.
So what did I do? I pushed harder.
Nine Months of Madness
Looking back at those first nine months in Thailand, I honestly don’t know what I was thinking.
I started three different businesses, with three different people, in three different time zones. All at the same time. Pre-CFS I would have handled all this like a champ. As things were, my body started to fall apart pretty quickly.
Oh, and on top of all that I was recording a digital course. If you’ve ever made one of these you’ll know exactly how long they take. Script, shoot, edit, package. Repeat for every video. It never ends.
Every time I pushed hard, I crashed. A crash meant bed – sometimes for days at a stretch. Lying there stressing about not being able to work only made things worse. Then I’d get up, push like crazy to catch up, and crash yet again.
I went round and round in this loop. Rinse and repeat – for nine long months.
The Wall
As month ten rolled around, I finally ran out of patience.
Money was getting dangerously low. My health was in pieces. And I’d been using the time when I was too ill to work to learn as much as I could find about CFS. Books, articles, YouTube videos, blog posts, Facebook groups full of thousands of people all dealing with the same thing.
I began to take stock of things and try out some potential solutions.
It was time to to stop. Not slow down. I had to hard stop everything for the first time since my early twenties.
The businesses, the course, the lot. I put the laptop away and finally started to work on my health.
What Actually Helped
Diet turned out to be a big piece of it. I cut out a long list of things. The two that made the biggest immediate difference:
Alcohol. I had my last drink on August 15, 2023. Coming up on three years as I write this and I haven’t had one since. CFS hangovers are not normal hangovers. Think ten times worse and you’re in the right area. Once I understood what alcohol was doing to me, stopping was easy. Obvious, even.
White carbs. I read that insulin spikes can be bad for many people with CFS, so I stopped eating white carbs. Within two or three days I felt massively different. Still far from well, still a long way from any kind of normal. But my sleep improved almost straight away. Brain fog started to ease off. My mood came up. After everything I’d been through, even small improvements felt huge.
I’m still playing with my diet now two years later, and still finding things that make a real difference.
Coming Home
Exactly 1 year after arriving in Thailand, both my visa, and money ran out. I had no choice other than to return to the UK.
I want to be straight about how shitty that felt to me.
Since I was in my thirties, my pattern has been to move to a foreign country, start a new online business, and make it work. Every single time I’d done that before – I succeeded. Without fail.
2023/2024 was the first time it hadn’t. I was 50 years old, broke, and super ill. And for the first time in my adult life, I came home with nothing to show for it.
I felt like a complete failure.
Coming back to the UK didn’t immediately turn things around. I was unemployed and unable to work for the next 18 months. Health still up and down. Very little money. Living with friends and family because I couldn’t afford a place of my own.
Life had sucked for a long time and it wasn’t getting any easier.
Meanwhile, AI Happened
While all of this was playing out, a small thing called artificial intelligence arrived and changed the world.
I remember people starting to play with it when I was still up in Liverpool. By the time I got home and through the two years after that, it had completely taken over. Nvidia became the most valuable company on earth. Tools that barely existed 18 months earlier were replacing entire job categories. Every company on the planet suddenly had an AI strategy.
Politics were also going mad on both sides of the Atlantic.
Anyway. That’s the world. Here’s what changed for me….
Returning to Blogging (and work in general)
Things have gotten a little better thru 2026.
My health has improved to the point where I can work again without crashing afterwards. That sounds like a small thing. It isn’t. After over seven years of struggling to function, getting solid hours of productive work done without ending up in bed feels brilliant.
Understand that managing CFS is a full-time job in itself. I have to watch my energy constantly, stick to a restricted diet, make sure I’m sleeping enough, exercising enough, eat piles of supplements and vitamins, oh and not push too hard. The 12, 15, even 18 hour laptop marathons I used to run without a second thought are gone. My nervous system just can’t handle it anymore. Life as it is – is exhausting enough.
At the time of writing this post, I’m able to work mmm almost part-time hours and am building again gradually. Learning Claude Code, getting properly into AI tools, and putting together some new things I can’t wait to share here.
Returning to blogging after all of this feels right. Internet Bling has been sitting here quietly for three and a half years doing its job – still pulling in traffic. Every time I check Analytics, it surprises me.
That’s what properly written, properly optimised posts do. And a lot of that is down to Yoast SEO. Props to this plugin – it just works. If you use WordPress, definitely install it! No affiliation whatsoever, I just highly recommend this plugin.
Internet Bling is back. Not as an ecom blog – that chapter is done. I’m moving into new niches and projects, creating apps and tools, marketing methodology, AI, and more. That’s what you’ll find here going forward.
For anyone who has been checking back and finding nothing – thank you for your service.
More soon,
~ Dan