Oh look!

Now that I’ve neglected this to the point that no one is reading anymore, it’s safe to post again.

The truth is there hasn’t been anything happening on the cancer treatment front, I’ve more or less settled into a routine with work, and my mental health is better overall than it’s been in quite a while. Of course that has meant I haven’t needed to whine about anything here. And I pretty much still don’t but there are definitely things on the horizon.

Looming largest in my mind right now is another covid surge. I’m sure any number of the none people reading this have heard me lamenting that I couldn’t do another year of covid and it’s looking like another year of covid is a good possibility. Having spent no small amount of time ruminating on this, right now, from a mental standpoint I think I actually could do another year of covid. I would certainly be happier to not have to but, strange as it may seem, having a couple months mostly away from the bedside may have allowed me to recharge my batteries a little bit. Well maybe not another year of covid, maybe six months. I don’t know. Anyway, the point is I could definitely do one day at a time which is more than I would have been willing to say a few weeks ago.

As an aside – there really isn’t enough information on the omicron variant to make any definitive statements about what the next year is going to look like. What is noteworthy is that in South Africa, where omicron was first identified, the delta variant was pretty much the exclusive strain being passed around and omicron is out-competing it and is on it’s way to becoming the new dominant strain. It is a deeply concerning variant and an excellent reason to get your vaccine booster ASAP if you haven’t already.

Anyway, this revelation that stopping to rest for a while can replenish one’s stores of mental and physical energy is the latest in a series of startling discoveries I have made recently now that my brain has had time to reboot.

The first of these came to me maybe two weeks ago. I believe I have lamented here before that I didn’t really know what to do with the advice to “make time for yourself”. The foundation of my difficulties was that I had more things to do than time to do them and it was impossible for me to make time for anything else. Short of actually making time (see any number of science-fiction stories to learn why that isn’t a good idea) I genuinely couldn’t comprehend how I was supposed to “make time for yourself”.

My revelation came while putting together a to-do list for the week. As was usual, I knew there wasn’t going to be time to get to everything so I was triaging and prioritizing what I really had to get done and what I could let slide and it occurred to me that I could just put myself on the to-do list and treat it the way I would any other project. And that the time-for-myself project didn’t always have to be the one that got dropped when it came down to prioritizing for time. If I had been on the road to Damascus I would have fallen to the ground. This was a revolutionary technique that I could use to try and…

…right… make time for yourself… like everyone has been telling you to…

Ahem.

Right. So I’ve been making time for myself and the world hasn’t ended yet.