The Best Laid Plans...

Today I had a plan. Tomorrow I had a plan. Both plans went out the window today. One on purpose, the other by some design that was not my own. One changed based on a nudge, the other by circumstance.

I need to go to where I used to live and move things out. I have been wanting to go for several days now. But it apparently needs to wait til another day now, and I was fine with it. I got the impression that the things that happened in some way needed to, and since I had the flexibility, I did not think twice about letting them happen.

At the same time there is still a list of things that remains untouched. I try to act on it, but can't, due to the other party. For instance, I went to call Disability today to tell them I have moved and to see where things stand, but the wait was 45 minutes. They said they could call back. Unfortunately I missed the call. By the time I tried again, at 4:45, I was told I was out of luck.

Then, I also got information from a couple of people who are trying to help me sell my prints/images. I love that. The problem is that I do not have a lot to sell on hand. The question then becomes do I spend money I don't have in the hopes that something will come out of it?

I don't have that answer yet. I don't have the ability to even focus on it just yet, either. I just want to get as I can done in the next few days, and then see where I stand medically, and how I feel after my next treatment. Then, provided I am not sleeping my days away, I will be up and seeing what I can do to be creative. But there will still be things to do at the other place for up to the next week interdispersed in there somewhere.

So much fun. Yeah. Baby.

I think I am too tired to worry about much, but that doesn't mean I am free. The weight of the stuff that I am having to deal with is weighing on me. It is very difficult to deal wih treatment and life. When you start feeling better from the last treatment is when you go for the next one.

I am now trying a few new things that will hopefully help. I don't know how long it takes for something to work, or not, but I am gonna try them and see what happens, I don't know what else I can do. 

There are times I am incredibly optimistic and feel good, and other times I have low level panic. Life is such a mixed bag. I never quite know what I will pull from its magic hat.

Today I was telling someone that I do not believe that I have ever said, "Why me?" when it comes to cancer. It was more like, "cancer? Now what? What do I have to do?" I imagine that was in some part my coping mechanism because occasionally I am hit by profound waves of emotion one might have thought I should have experienced early on.

The question for me has often been more of, "Why cancer?" or a version of why me that isn't so much a statement of victimization, but what is it that my being dealt with cancer means to me, my life, and all related people and circumstances?

When working with someone energetically after some less than desired results I was asking the why question in relation to why the results dipped. Her response? "Does it matter?" In a way, no. But logically, if it was something I did/did not do to precipitate that, then it might be good to know.

I keep thinking this experience is not about what I put on my body, or what I put in it. I tend to think those things might matter, maybe. In The book Dying to be Me, Anita Moorjani talks about how her diet changed after her Near Death Experience. And it is not in the way you might think. She actually started to eat whatever she wanted to. She no longer saw so much inherent danger in the foods. She was freed up.

I started to get to the same place she was. I know too much about the foods we eat, and too many reasons not to eat them. Some might say it is a good thing. But the thing is, it may not matter. Some people who eat the way some think you "should" have still been diagnosed with cancer, and died from it.

When I went on my cross-country trip I was determined to eat however I wanted to. If you know you are going to die, wouldn't it make more sense to enjoy what you could, while you could? I do not think I ate terribly, but it was outside of my more recently leanings. When I returned, my bloodwork showed improvement, and I felt so energized and good.

Within a month, though, I was st my worst spot since being diagnosed, and back to taking Avastin.

What a freaking rollercoaster ride.

In the end, I don't have any blanket, master answers, although I sure wish I did. I would like to go back and start really living life again, and stop worrying about running out of money and not being able to work, and having to schedule life between treatments.

I would also love to get back on the road, and do talks, and make art, and get my book written. I feel a bit like a person on a holiday somewhere. You can rarely, if ever, see and do all that you want to. You have to make choices, and some things get a light treatment, and some none at all. 

When I was in the UK in college, I was really close to going up to Scotland. I am sure it would have been amazing. But I told myself I would come back the next year.

I never made it.

I suspect there are things in our lives that are just like that. "Next year, I'll..." and then either next year comes and it doesn't happen, or the next year comes, and the opportunity no longer exists, because you don't. 

Some desires are never manifest.

I had heard we are never given a desire we cannot fulfill. It sounded good, at first. But in time I came to see how when things don't happen it is in some way explained that we are responsible - whether we have a clue about what it is, or not. And whether we can consciously "fix it," or not. To me that seems like more torture than the recognition that some desires are never manifest. Why be tortured by the things we don't know - especially the things we don't know we don't know?

And yet, in our fix-it society, that is exactly what we do. We set ourselves up for all kinds of pain when we do not do the things other people somehow think we could and should.  I think a lot of the "New Age" or "spiritual" thinking is "just" another way for is to think we have the ability to fix and control things - which I am not sure that we do.

What if...

What if the things in life that we think made happen only happened because we were alert and paying attention to what was happening, and caught what we wanted in the process? Ever see the video in which people are doing something on the stage, and you are asked to count how many red shirts there are, but then after it is over, you are asked something about something you totally mssed because you were focused on something else?

What if things happen the way they happen, but because we view things a certain way we think they are what we think they are, but they are in fact someother phenomena? Have you ever sworn something was one way, but it was really another? Our drive to label things is a way of focusing and narrowing. At times, if we get what we want, that may seem to be a good thing. But I think there are times it can set things up in a way that we don't always know what we got.

In the meantime I still try to plan, but more often than not I find those plans changing. I am guessing life has always been like this, I was just too busy trying to slot myself into structures designed to give us the illusion we have some control to notice.