Time

So, how long do we spend in our lives waiting? (Thank you, JP!) Of course, in the age of Google, I asked the mighty question answerer and surprisingly, didn’t really get an answer. Maybe it was the way I worded my search request – how long do we wait in life – but in the wide open internet plains, it appears that no one has figured this out yet. (Scientists and mathematicians – hop on it!) Or, it could be that I was slightly distracted by a related search possibility –

As a leukemia survivor – I’m halfway to my 5 years when I’ll be considered a ‘true’ survivor – it was a bit startling. I was tempted to touch the link but I stopped myself. I didn’t want to get bogged down in statistics and stories and scenarios, especially since we are all different and one case of cancer isn’t exactly like another. I’d rather just remember what my oncologist told me on the day I was diagnosed – 95% survival rate if you hit 5 years.

Time has also been on my thoughts this morning, (again – Thank you, JP!) especially in relation to that alternate search possibility. Time is different for each person; it’s as individual as we are. Some people never think about; they just live their life. However, for me, time is something I am often over dwelling on, especially the last three months, and it can dampen the spirit like you wouldn’t believe. There are two tracks my thinking travels on, typically at the same time. (Good Morning, Alliteration!) The first has to do with the belief that at age 38, I have only just started living my own life. (That’s a whole other blog topic. Probably several actually.) The second track is, in a way, related to the first. As a cancer survivor I often ask this question – how much time do I have left? The fear is that now that I have my own life, it would be quite ironical if I relapsed now. (Relapse is the word I’m scared of the most right now.)

I can spend oodles of precious time running worst case scenarios over and over in my mind. (And I have done this many, many times.) In reality, to me the cancer survivor, that is a waste of time. I need not spend my energies (and possibly limited time?) doing that. Rather, I should spend my time progressing towards goals I have set in my mind. There is still much to do with my life (as daunting as that seems to me) and throwing woe-is-me pity parties doesn’t help. Those energies need to go in gathering the confidence I need so that I can do with my life what I desire.

I was up early this morning, thanks to one of my cats. I was unhappy about this as I stayed up late writing. As I usually do first thing, I checked Twitter and saw Josh Paul's tweets. I was still in a crappy mood about waking up early and started to complain about it but then I thought about what he had said and instead of wasting that time complaining, I hopped out of bed and wrote this.

(A big THANK YOU to Josh Paul for his thought provoking tweets this morning! BIG SMILE)