Learn This

Sometimes the only answer is a martini.

Wait, that sounds bad.

Sometimes the only answer is… um….well…yep. Still a martini.

First off, I need to apologize to some of you most loyal readers for abandoning you for so long. I lost a bit of my mojo when my most tough-loving transplant doctor banned me from competing in Hawaii. I was so defeated that I just couldn't write for a while. I took some time off training, did a lot of yoga and meditation, and became a devoted regular at my gym. (Really. I’m on a first-name basis with the owner). I gained some muscle, got really good at squats, got my lungs back, and finally jumped back into the pool (quite literally). Now I am training for the Vancouver Triathlon in July, where I will wear a Team in Training race kit and make all of you sponsors proud. In March 2015 I will compete in the Lavaman Triathlon as promised.

Now. Back to that martini.

I had to make a big decision yesterday, a decision that I’ve been wrestling with for two years. I had to decide whether I was coming back to my PhD, or letting it go to pursue a different life.

I won't go through all the agonizing details and conversations that went into making this decision. But in the end, it just seemed crazy to go right back into my former, stressful, high-achieving academic life as if cancer had never happened. I could not make sense of anything in the last two years if that’s what I was going to do. At least if I took a major left turn in my life, then cancer (maybe, sort of, kind of) made sense. Not that I really believe that we get cancer to learn life lessons. But we learn those lessons whether we were “meant” to or not. Cancer is not a gift, and I will never say that. But it is a wake up call. And like any human, I like things to make sense. I like things to have a reason. And if cancer had no reason at all except to pour trauma onto my family and wreak havoc on my body…well… then the only answer is definitely a martini.

One thing I know for sure. When I was lying in that hospital bed, hearing the word leukemia and thinking I was going to die, I was flooded with overwhelming regret, thinking that I had just spent the last two years I was ever going to have being stressed out and unhappy.

Trust me, that is not how you want to go out.

And whether I have two years left or forty, I want to spend them happy. I know better than most how tenuous life can be. You can have everything mapped out, you can have your perfect five year plan, and then ka-boom. Cancer. Car accident. Aneurysm. ALS. Freak fall down the stairs. Heart attack. The universe has unlimited creative ways in which we can leave this world without warning.

So if you learn anything from me at all, learn this: if you are always stressed out and unhappy, it is time to change your life. Your future is not guaranteed, and you don’t want to spend your last year or two on earth being a miserable human being. (And you definitely do not want cancer to be the way you learn this lesson. Trust me.)

 I know one more thing for sure: 2012 was not my year to go. God has other plans for me. I’d like to believe that we all have something to do before we kick that proverbial bucket.  Whether I have a small role or a big one, I am clearly not done, because I am still here. And I have to respect that by doing life right.

So… what am I going to do, besides drink that martini?

I’m going to live life fully. I am going to love deeply. I am going to have adventures. I am going to spend as much time with my kids as I can. I am not going to play it safe. I am going to help others less fortunate than I am. I am going to travel and dance and laugh and run. And I am going to write about it all.

And hopefully, I will find my role somewhere along the way.