Thoughts to Action

After my optimism of beginning a new year, my bold declaration of dreams, ideas and hope, and my deep-seated need to really Live this year, I find myself a bit stuck. How does that actually translate into action? The first 10 days of 2012 feel exactly like all the other days and it frustrates me a little bit.

Partly it's that I've come down with the first cold since I've had cancer (what? A cold? Now that my immune system is supposed to be back up in working order?) Not once during chemo did I get sick (outside of the actual "treatment" that is) but now I do. Weird.

But I think it's more then feeling under the weather for the past week. Partly it's that I'm not sure where to go from here. I want to keep moving forward, living well, with purpose, and now that cancer is slowly moving towards the rearview mirror I'm finding a lack of focus. I was talking to Sam about this today and he thought this year should have helped clear up priorities. And it has in the sense that I know what I don't want to spend my time doing but it hasn't really helped me know what I should do instead. And I'm also realizing that I still have to do all the regular stuff. Clean, laundry, figure out what to make for dinner every. darn. night. And that stuff isn't really life giving or fun it's just life. I'm glad to be doing it - but what else?

And then there is writing. After Zach was born I started writing a novel. A fantasy novel about lots of fantastical things. I started writing because I was so immersed in babies that I needed an outlet. Something that used they dying parts of my brain, something that wasn't about diapers, baby puke and incessant crying (I love you Zachy but you did all of those things!). I have over 500,000 words written in a myriad of documents on my hard drive. Some good, most mediocre but it forms a loose book with lots of holes. Do I go back to it? Crack it open, try again? Is this something that I want to spend my time doing. My post-cancer, you never know what's gonna happen time?

Sam thinks I should write about cancer. That's sort of what I've been doing here but I could expand, go back and relive it all. Maybe or maybe not yet.

In my deepest heart I believe that God gives us dreams. Dreams that we're scared to admit to others or even to ourselves. Something we just want to do so badly - yet saying it out loud is terrifying. But when we do it we feel right. At peace, content. Writing is sort of like that for me.

Upon reflection, that sounds an awful lot like an answer. At least to part of the question.

Now the hard part - translating thoughts to action.