I’ve had really good runs of sleep lately, and then there will be a night like tonight where I can’t get beyond the first few hours of good sleep (I can almost always fall asleep with ease, thankfully!) So here I am, before midnight! Gasp. And writing. I will most likely be up for a few hours and then will go back to bed, but I aim to enjoy these few hours, and what better way to honor the deep night than to write?

I had a successful chemo session yesterday! I was joking with my neighbor Jan across the street…we saw her and her husband Greg on their bikes just as we were getting home from my infusion.…joking that we celebrate being healthy enough to get poison injected into our veins. Totally ironic. Jan had her own brush with cancer a few years ago and is now living life to its fullest. Riding bikes to go get a burger for Greg’s birthday…they are both about 80! They go skiing, Greg makes rock art, Jan bikes to yoga, and they are both very civically involved. What good role models. 🙂 I’m so lucky to have so many people in my life who are busy living. Who spend every day (or almost every day) doing exactly what they want with the people they love. And yes, that involves those still working, too. I have always put emphasis on doing work that I believe in and that energizes me, and the end result of living in that manner is that I tend to surround myself with others living that way too. It’s a great gift. 

In fact, when I couldn’t sleep before getting up, I was listening to an On Being podcast on just that subject. Give it a listen: 

And I love that both the guests, Atul Gawande and Krista Tippit, gave a nod to Annie Dillard’s quote: “How you live your days is how you live your life.” You have probably read it before in my blog journals. It’s a question I have long kept at the center of my decision-making. I like to live as if each day would be full enough, joyful enough, rich enough to be my last. Before, it was never about death; it was about living a fun, fulfilling, inspired, adventurous life. I’ve had conversations with friends before when they were deliberating a heavy decision…I often say, “There are no bad decisions; some just may be more work than others.” I believe that. And also there is so much time! I look back at the 20-year-old me, and I’m so grateful that I threw my hat in with the peace corps. So many people put too much weight into the job decision right out of college; it seemed so critical that it will set the tone for the rest of your life, but in truth, there is so much time. I’ve had 20 different careers, and sure, now I can look back and draw the connective thread between them all (well, most of them, I still get hung up on the metal roofing gig!) and see how they all make sense. But at the time, they sure didn’t. It was following my curiosity and seeking to learn something from each experience. By taking on the position of student in my jobs, I was usually able to gain a skill that could be used later on, and then it often was easier to know when it was time to move on. Objective complete, next! What else is out there?

Of course, we are living in different times. Generations ago, people kept their jobs for their entire adult lives. Granted, they also had pensions and a social system and work culture that invested in them…we don’t have that now, and it’s much more accepted to hold many, many jobs….it’s now important to tell a good story about how and why you moved around so much.

Man, I’m still getting hung up on the whole short life span with a stage 4 diagnosis. I’m also still determined not to let that slow me down in the “maintenance phase” of life after chemo. I also realize that when I wrap up this first round, it might be the first of several chemo cycles, but hopefully, there will be long phases of maintenance in between where I can live a semi-normal life. It’s hard to fully conceptualize, though. I started seeing a new PT who specializes in oncology patients, and she was encouraging me to think of my daily energy battery as having a finite life. Even walking slower will help conserve the battery, so walk slower, strive to only have one doctor’s appointment a day….to be very conservative with my energy so I’m not totally toast at the end of the day. And I have been. I tend to live my best life before noon or early afternoon and then retire to the bedroom to nap and rest the remainder of the day. Can I get better about spreading my energy out? Will I have more energy when the chemo is done? I’m not working, but I am still chair of the Oregon Trails Coalition board (although I’m about to bring on a co-chair to help share the duties, which will be a huge help!), and I’m also volunteering to help support Oregon Desert Trail hikers. I have tended to ODT hikers for nine years, and I can’t stop now! At least while I have energy. Finiate energy. And then the books, reading the books you all have sent me. I try to make time for that! I just started Mike Beaty’s suggestion, Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea series (thanks Mike, loving it so far!) and an advanced copy of a book that Snorkle sent about the queerness of nature (fasinating!) and have another on deck, Thirty Below, a story of the first all-women’s ascent of Denali that my friend Lori, or Shake N Bake sent me, AND I just got a volume of poetry in the mail yesterday by an unnamed gifter, Marge Piercy’s Made in Detroit. Thanks stranger!

So many books to read, so little time.

How do I want to spend my days? Reading! Walking, visiting with friends and family, spending time with Kirk, netflix and chill (with popcorn), and travel…and fortunately I do have travel on deck. I’m feeling pretty rich right now. Rich in life (not to be mistaken with money…)

I love the excitement of a trip coming up. I keep adding things to my packing list, things I want to bring to Madison, things that I want to do in Madison.

I’ll be seeing one of my childhood best friends, Jasmine. Our houses were within biking distance from each other in the countryside of Almond. I would bike her home, then she would bike me home, and I would bike her home and vice versa. We could spend whole afternoons doing that, making fun of our brothers who liked to bike in circles at the intersections of our roads “turkey vultures” we would cry out as we peddled past. When we weren’t biking back and forth we might be climbing trees, or making forts in the cornfield, exploring the woods behind her house or mine, or making up ice skating routines in the yard ice rink her dad would make with the garden hose when it was cold enough to keep for a while. AND Jasmine hiked the PCT a few years ago! Kirk and I drove out to meet her and her partner at an Oregon trailhead near Mt. Hood. I brought plenty of food and beer, of course, and we marveled that two of us from Almond, Wisconsin, were PCT hikers. Love it.

Then I’m going to see all the friends that are actually attending the conference, like Allgood (my birthday brother…he is a June ‘77 baby just like me, although I’m a few days older). He just got a job with the hiking app Far Out and will be attending on their behalf. Then there is Steph and Chelsea and Jodi, and probably plenty more from the Oregon Trails Coalition, and then there will be all the other folks I met at trail conferences over the past few years. Exciting!

Then I’ll cap off the week with a visit from some high school friends who are driving up from Central Illinois. We all graduated from Dunlap High in ‘95, and as luck would have it, they just came out to Bend last summer for my birthday! Kelly, Melissa, Celena and Hanna got to see Bend for the first time, and we’ll get to hang out again…quite a moving thing because we all lost Missy less than two years ago to lung cancer. We’ll miss Carrie, our other high school bud who is back in Bend (she moved here about 8 years ago), but I’m spoiled; I get to see Carrie all the time 🙂

To explain the top photo a bit….we drove up to Elk Lake to have lunch that day when we pulled over for this photo opp with Mt. Bachelor. NEMO sent me a she-ra crown for my birthday, and Kirk gave me some loppers, so I had to carry both around and pose as much as possible 🙂

So again, how do I want to live my days? With friends! Doing fun things! 

The therapist I’ve been seeing even suggested to ask myself what this cancer year (years?) has allowed me to do, and if I’m honest, I’ve been able to refine my life down to the very essentials: spending time with people I love: Kirk, friends & family; reading; writing; and travel. And maybe it’s ok to be grateful? Oh man, that’s a hard one. To be grateful for the cancer while also fighting the cancer. It’s a complicated dynamic we have going on for sure.