Mets Day 250 - Slow reconciliation

I gradually have been reconciling myself to the fact that I will be leaving the full-time practice of law while I continue my ongoing battle with cancer and its cascade of side effects.  Perhaps I will be able to work part-time.  Perhaps it will be a leave of absence.  Perhaps it will be permanent.  I don't know.
In some ways, I think the uncertainty and lack of clarity is the most difficult aspect to accept.  I wrote earlier about my realization that my world view had been turned upside down, and I no longer had a recognizable framework for filtering life. I am still working on developing a new framework, but for now I have decided to consciously limit my event horizon to one year.  I will make plans for the next 12 months, but not beyond.

My rationale for a 12 month horizon is based upon the worst-case scenario:  If the next scans revealed that my cancer has metastasized into solid secondary tumors, I likely would die in the next 12-18 months, and the last 4-6 months would be pretty miserable.  Any plans that I would make for beyond that time likely would be unrealized.

I don't see this rationale as pessimistic or fatalistic.  It does not assume that distant tumors will form at a date certain, or even at all.  It merely provides a construct that I am currently able to accept.  It helps focus my plans on the near future, and releases me of worry about anything beyond that 12 month window.  Of course, the horizon is constantly shifting with each day.  It just means that I usually use my reading glasses instead of my distance glasses.

This is a fundamental shift for me.  For decades I have projected decades into the future, then charted out interim steps necessary to achieve my long-term goals.  I started that process at about age 14 or 15, when I began to become sufficiently self-aware to realize that my long-term objectives could drive my short-term choices.  I also realized around that age that my short-term choices could have long term consequences. 

At age 14, I got a job as a dishwasher at the Greycliff restaurant in Ogden Canyon.  A friend of mine named Chris D. had started working there a few months before, and said it was a good place to work.  Several other kids in my church congregation also worked there.  One was supposed to give me a ride home.  The first night I worked was a Friday night, and I spent five or six hours slinging slop off of dirty dishes and running them through a huge industrial dishwasher.  By midnight, I was soaking wet, exhausted, and ready to go home.  But Chris and the kid who was supposed to drive me home told me that the tradition at the end of the work night was for all of the staff to collect the leftover food, sit around a large table, and eat.  I was all for free food.  After we had polished off the leftovers, several joints were lit and passed around.  I was surprised when the kids from my church toked up.  I nervously ad quickly passed the roach clip along when it was handed to me, acutely uncomfortable with the situation. My ride showed no sign of leaving, and after an hour, I called my mom to come pick me up.  I told her what happened, she complained to the management who apologized and said it would never happen again.  The next night the exact same thing happened.  I quit.  Chris, however, stayed, gradually pulled away from his family, his non-using friends, and the church.  He got into harder drugs, eventually fried his brain with some bad acid, and spent the next several years in and out of jail. 

I understood then that short-term choices can have long-term consequences.  I began setting long-term economic goals -- good grades, a college scholarship, law school, join a law firm, become a partner, support my family -- and long-term spiritual goals -- LDS mission, temple marriage, a solid commitment to family.  Achieving those goals has been a lifelong effort. 

I had several future economic goals -- advancement in the law firm partnership, further development of client relationships, better funding for retirement -- and additional spiritual goals -- finish raising my family, serving a mission with Jennifer, strengthening my family bonds as my children we launched, married, and had grandchildren.  I have let go of the economic goals.  While I still hope for those spiritual goals, I do not look more than a year in advance. 

I am beginning to realize that my letting go of my additional economic goals is freeing me to pursue things that have greater importance.  Today, for example, I edited a couple of briefs from home, and was there to greet my kids when they came home from school.  I made a early dinner and we ate at around 5 pm, then we watched a Netflix show.  That would never happen if I was working a "normal" schedule:  I rarely got home before 6:30 or 7 pm.  The simple joys of spending time with family are so easily overlooked. 

Reorienting myself is a slow work in progress.  In some ways, I feel that I am reinventing, or more accurately, redefining myself.  That is a rare opportunity, and is a new and exciting and uncertain and unexpected consequence of my cancer.  It's not a bad thing, and may even be a very good thing.