A way to work despite chronic pain

Hi, I'm Maciej.

I'm a software engineer with fibromyalgia (a chronic pain condition). Practically, it means this: I pay for every keystroke with pain, the pain accumulates, and I have a finite budget of keystrokes per day. When it runs out, it runs out.

So I built a way to work that doesn't spend it.

I program by voice.

For years that meant Talon Voice — and if you've tried it, you know it's a grind. Every symbol spoken, every cursor move a command. It worked, and I did it, because it was the only way.

Then the ground shifted — twice. Speech-to-text got good enough (Whisper and what came after), and LLM-based coding tools made it possible to program without your hands on every character. For most developers that was a convenience. Some of you code from your phone now. For me it's the difference between working and not working — so I pushed it further than most. Voice is how I talk to the system, and AI agents are the hands: they do the typing, the clicking, the repetitive parts, on their own machines, while I direct. I still read every line. My hands just aren't the bottleneck anymore.

It's not an experiment. The setup has logged:

It works. It just doesn't fit the shape of a job.

It worked well enough that after years of being unable to hold a job, I got one at a major tech company. But a setup like this can't run on a corporate laptop. So I was back to the mouse — spending twenty minutes and a chunk of the day's budget moving images from a markdown report into the company doc tool, one click at a time, and wondering, the whole time, why there still isn't a way to just do this. Things that are a minor annoyance for everyone else were, for me, the whole afternoon.

And the deeper problem: nine-to-five assumes a body that works on schedule. Mine doesn't. When it says stop, it's not a suggestion — and a workplace built around fixed hours has no room for that. That mismatch, more than anything, is what I'm trying to engineer my way out of.

Earlier this year I lost that job while on medical leave. I'm on a rehabilitation benefit now — it came through at much less than I'd planned around. This fundraiser is about closing that gap for the next few months.

What the money is for

Honestly, bills — and being able to afford physiotherapy.

My rehabilitation benefit doesn't cover my current living costs. There's a shortfall every month, before I even get to the care I need. This fundraiser is about closing that gap for a few months.

Physiotherapy is the biggest thing I'm going without. At around PLN 200 a session, regular appointments are completely out of reach right now. I sometimes manage to pay for psychotherapy, but there's simply nothing left for physio. It's care I need and currently can't afford.

And the setup itself. This is my workplace, and like any workplace it has a monthly bill — the machines and the models the agents run on. It's the reason I can work at all in a shape my body tolerates. Right now it competes with rent, and rent wins.

The goal: PLN 15,000. A few months of breathing room — to cover everyday costs, start regular physiotherapy, and keep working toward a more sustainable income without falling further behind.

If you can help, I'd be grateful. If you can't, sharing this helps too. And if you'd rather just talk — maciek@maciekk.com.

Thank you for reading.

P.S. The rest of the infrastructure team: Dixie · Pixie · Czarek