A few weeks ago I was contacted by a student of Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. He came across my websites and blogs  - this one here and my other one dedicated to my wife’s breast cancer. He’s writing a long piece for his master's project - kind of a long essay, a la the New Yorker - on the way that the online world has transformed the way we deal with death and disease, with particular interested in blogs and bloggers who take on this challenge. I agreed to help him and we yesterday met for our first interview. Poor guy, had to listen to my incoherent babbling. I was surprised by the level of detail he wanted to know from me. As he asked me the questions, I became to realize how much work and time I had put into my two websites lately. And how frustrating it can be at times, especially struggling with technical stuff. On the other hand, it is rewarding in a way. It’s like getting another thing accomplished. And, of course, let alone the fact that I was able to meet you guys through the process and get your feedback and advice.

I will be going on short term disability starting next week. Six weeks without my office, I’m curious to see how I’m going to handle that. Like many others who leave their job for more than just a few days, I drive myself nuts over the two million things that are supposedly sooo important and de need to get done before my grand departure. And like everybody else, I will probably come back just to realize that the company still did very well without me and some folks won’t have even realized that I was gone. A sobering experience. Plus with the blessings of modern technology including laptops with wireless access, I will be able to satisfy my illusion – which of course is nothing else but just a misperception of myself– of being invaluable by checking my email every five minutes. My wife already told me, by the second I will return from the hospital I will be booting-up my laptop. She’s probably right. And when you think about it, that’s just equally stupid and sad at the same time, isn’t it?

When I come back from surgery, I want to start an experiment. I have been thinking about that for quite a while now. I always wanted to look into meditation, but never got around to do it. Or more truthfully speaking, always found an excuse not to. But I do have a kind of craving and desire inside me, that eagerly seeks to find a way of making time for myself. Quality time, not sitting in front of the computer or stuff like that. Just relaxing and getting my head straight. Praying does have that effect on me to some extent, but I think there are ways to intensify the whole experience. Well, I guess I will have ample time to look into that between when I come back from surgery and before I (officially) go back to work.

And one more thing to Sue’s comment on my previous posting. Yes, I couldn’t agree more. My wife’s breast cancer and my kidney-cancer have been a real eye-opener in many different ways. And I have a feeling, that there is still much more to come for me, things that I ‘m going to learn about myself and my relationship to others as I will continue to travel on in my cancer journey.  

 

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