Blogging Through the Back Door

It occurs to me that time flies, whether you are wasting it or not.

I could sit here and pontificate all day long over the definition of "wasting time" and its relative nature. I could rant about society imposing unreasonable expectations and that a bit - or two - of leisure time here and there is a healthy thing. I could wax on endlessly about how one man's castle is another man's prison, but I don't think that's the important piece of what's aching to get out tonight. The important piece is that I'm losing it. I am fairly certain I have never felt more broken, more exhausted, more... unmotivated in my life. And I'm not trying to suggest I think those issues will be rectified by writing, but I decided, as I was lying in bed for over an hour labeling my mind's frantic tail-chasing as "thinking" and desperately trying to "let it go," I thought, it certainly isn't going to set me back any if I get up and do what I should do for myself.

So now I sit here with a Melatonin preparing a lullaby - and I reread that paragraph. It reads pretty nicely, actually, especially for a first draft. A little catchy, with good rhythm, it screams "opening paragraph, chapter 3 of Stacy Kowtko's new book, 'The New, Amazing, Jaw-Dropping, Grand Adventures of the Phantom Nip' with its admission of weakness followed deftly by the correct answer. You, see, that paragraph subtly, subliminally suggests that I'm getting it right.

Now I'll describe what *actually* happened.

After lying in bed for over an hour labeling my mind's frantic tail-chasing as...

Damn. I really don't want to explain what brought me to this post. I literally typed the fifteen words above before I consciously realized I was, again, telling the embellished story. *Here's* what happened.

For an hour after I laid down to sleep, I lay awake worrying about work and family. I planned my forms I need to complete for the IRS concerning our current "interesting" relationship. I stressed about tomorrow's classes. I promised myself I would make a dentist appointment to at least see if they can save my broken tooth and if I will be able to afford the work that will need to be done. I rehearsed the talk I want to have with my doctor that I now have to leave because I messed up and left them out of my bankruptcy. I chided myself for too much gaming and not enough reading or writing. After every self-admonishment, I desperately reminded myself that I do truly believe everything happens for a reason and that this, too, shall pass. But after every reassurance, another self-admonishment would creep into my thoughts, and the cycle would start all over again.

After about an hour, I gave up and got up. When I got up, I instinctively picked up my phone from the bed and had to tell myself to put it down and pick up a book. A page an a half in, and I couldn't tell you what it said. THAT'S when I decided it couldn't hurt to blog.

Then I spent 20 minutes researching a Google "502. That's an error. The server encountered a temporary error and could not complete your request. Please try again in 30 seconds. That's all we know" and enjoyed a little victory jig when I figured out a way around blogger.com's MAJOR access issues they are currently experiencing. I briefly wondered if the universe was trying to tell me something, but when have I ever listened to the universe?

And even now, as I read back through this one more time before I'm done, I have to convince myself not to replace "unmotivated" with something less... damning. Like... drained. Or... empty. Or... lost. Depressed, even. *Anything* but unmotivated. But unmotivated is what I am, so in the interest of honesty and health and recovery, it stays.

And so I close, with the hopes that this gut-spillage will mix nicely with the Melatonin and lull me to sleep before 3. I close with the hope that this release, this sharing, this naming of the enemy will give me some measure of power of it. I close with the hope that this gut-spillage will end up on the screen of someone who needs to read it. I close with the hope of some decent sleep tonight.

And I can't explain it, but I do still believe in those hopes. I have named my captor, and it now has no power over me. (Rest in peace, D.B.) "Wasting time" really is a relative term, if you think about it.

Last Published...

...on Oct 17, 2015. So much for the ability, drive, motivation for consistency, and my Inner Breast Cancer B@d@ss...

I wonder if I had blogged regularly through this... whole thing, if I would have felt stronger...

...or if it would have drained me more.

I wonder if I had blogged regularly through this... whole thing, if I would have felt more sane...

...or if it would have made me crazier.

I wonder if I had blogged regularly through this... whole thing, I would have been able to avoid the current financial crises I find myself facing...

...or if I'm just *that bad* at the daily life stuff.

I wonder if I had blogged regularly through this... whole thing, reality would look more like the grand ideas in my head...

...or if I want to blame cancer because I am a dreamer, not a doer.

I wonder a lot of things. I would say I wonder how important my wondering even is, but I know from experience that making a difference, even to one person, it's important. It's not just important to that person, it's important to our community, our society. Not only do we "get back" what we "put out there," what we send out creates ripple, whether we witness them or not.

I want my ripples to look like smiles. I want my ripples to sound like sighs of relief. I want my ripples to feel like company.

And that can't happen sitting on my couch guzzling Candy Crush Saga. I'm not sure how it DOES happen, but it won't happen in the cocoon of a cell phone screen.

The Hubris of the Scholar

sen·ior·i·tis

sēnyəˈrītis/

a supposed affliction of students in their final year of high school or college, characterized by a decline in motivation or performance and can be, although not always, accompanied by an absolute certainty that there is little left to learn.

As time pushes me ever closer to, once again, being a "senior," the reminders that I do *not* know everything seem to be getting more pointed.

The most recent?...  "Oh, L@@K," she said, all triumphant and confident and smiling, "I found her!  My Inner Breast Cancer B@d@ss was with me all along!  The Schol@r inside was just biding her time until I was ready.  And ready, I am!"  [Imagine arms up and out, with palms turned up towards the sky and head thrown back as the words burst from my very being] "I LOVE AND EMBRACE MY INNER BREAST CANCER B@D@SS!"

My naivety is a never-ending source of entertainment and consternation for me.  And probably those around me.

I was so happy to be in a place of "ok."  I was so relieved to find some peace.  I was so thrilled to feel *good* more frequently than *bad,* that I believed the hype.  I swallowed it all, hook, line, and sinker.  Chemo had ended *6 months* before.  All signs pointed (and still point) to complete and utter destruction of any detectable cancer.  I was moving through the reconstruction surgeries with relative ease.  With my rose-colored glasses adding a lovely hue to the whole scene, I allowed myself a congratulatory pat on the back for coming through this hell of a cancer journey with my sanity (largely) in tact.  I just *knew* that finding my I.B.C. B@d@ss was my first major step into "life after cancer."  I treated myself with a rare bit of pride and admiration at how far I had come in a year that was at once maddeningly long and anxiety-inducing short.  I may as well have been practicing my "Pomp and Circumstance" walk and decorating the mortarboard I would soon pin to my hair.  

I thought chemo was hard.  Well, to be fair, chemo *was* hard.  But there is a luxury in being the kind of physically ill that is painfully obvious to you and anyone around you.  No one (including yourself) expects much of you when you are getting a toxin designed to destroy human cells pumped into you every Friday.  And that, I have come to see, is something of a luxury.

The chemicals we put in me now don't make me puke, won't make me bald, and can't, technically, kill me unlike the weekly Taxol injections.  There are few visible signs of the chemical battle raging inside me.  But this, what I do now every day, this is harder.  Every day I get up, and I look in the mirror.  The way I look and the way I feel are so discordant, so opposing that cycle of physiological anxiety begins anew, just like it did the day before and just like it will tomorrow.  I look...  good.  But I feel...  indescribably terrible.  So much for my short-lived senioritis.

To Be Or Not To Be...

It kind of really is the question.  Should I be "this thing" or this OTHER thing?  Should I watch a show or play Diablo?  Should I start planning classes or start writing a book?  Should I get out of the house today or...?

Or stay inside like I have for months now?  I remember having energy...  I remember looking forward to *do things.*  Anything.  EVERYthing.  Everything takes so much *energy.*  There's a quote I included in my ScholarRevelationEntry that was supposed to inaugurate the "new" blog and  it goes...

"I am an old scholar, better-looking now than when I was young.  That's what sitting on your ass does to your face." ~Leonard Cohen

It's a nice sentiment.  I don't think he's right.  Not when I look in the mirror.  Sitting on my ass is probably just...  flattening my ass.  The Invisible Scholar is just sitting here on her ass, stewing in a lack of motivation and often overwhelming lethargy.  Just last night, all of the amazing, strong women of Spokane's 2015 "Listen to Your Mother" got together again to celebrate our experience this year.  I didn't go.  I spent all day holding myself and everything together and just...  had no happy left to share at the end of the day.  Little desire to celebrate something that now feels like a lifetime ago.  I've lived a lifetime in less than a month, it seems.

That statement is rather self-pitying.  And false.  And self-indulgent.  I could only be so lucky as to live *my* lifetime of experiences in less than a month.  I've had some pretty damn awesome experiences.

Some of them even occurred on this couch that is currently hosting my ever-more-flattening ass.  So the answer, then, is "to be."  To be what?  My Inner Breast Cancer Badass asks a most important question.  "Does it really matter," she whispers.

52 Days Later...

And I still have nothing to say?  Right.  I've taken notes on so many "wise," "insightful," "inspired," thoughts and ideas.  They are all over the house - stuffed between book pages, tucked into drawers, and ferreted away among so many other treasures.  So many personal revelations - innumerable "occurrences," and yet here I sit.  With nothing to say.  And a million things screaming to be let out.  My Inner Breast Cancer Badass - the "Invisible Scholar" - seems to be sitting down on the job.  Or scared to death.  One or the other.  But then, what other option is there?  Plenty.  Just not many I am *capable* of executing.  That is a much more positive statement then it appears.  What is it they say about talking to yourself?  As long as you don't reply?...