WHAT is your name? WHAT is your quest?

Yesterday, I told my oncologist that I’ve decided, against
medical advice, to continue my Leukemia treatment with consolidated
chemotherapy instead of a bone marrow transplant. Then, I watched 5 hours of t.v. dvds.

Last night, after I washed my face, and was drying it off in
the towel, I buried my face in it crying – What am I going to do with my life?
How can I change this? I don’t want to watch 5, or as on Sunday 7, hours of tv
for the rest of my life – how can I change? I don’t know how to change this (yet).

This morning, my friend Patsy called me to follow up on our
conversation from Sunday morning where I read her some of my fears around a
punitive god. Believing that if I were learning my life lessons properly, a) I wouldn’t
have gotten cancer, and b) now that I have cancer, if I learn them properly, I won’t
get it again.

That perhaps I don’t believe in a punitive god precisely,
but a rewarding one, which, is the same coin.

I told her that I don’t really feel that way, though. That although I somehow have this concept of an external god, which is something more like the old, white bearded man, aloof and judging, I actually believe in what it is I tap into when I
meditate, where I find grounding, a center, and a river of boundless love. That’s what I believe in, and trust in. To quote my friend
Renee, All the rest is static.

However, watching 5 or 7 hours of t.v., and eating my way
through my day is not how I want to spend my time either. Whichever kind of Power there is or is not. I am, and I imagine most people are, not content
to just do nothing. I need a purpose. I need a quest.

Sure, getting healthy is my quest, but there’s only so much
“resting” I can do, and I’m not spending it making art – I’m not inspired to
right now – so I need something else as I await my readmission into the
hospital next week. 

So, with all the magazines that are now coming to me, this
morning as I wrote my Morning Pages, it came: I could host my Creativity &
Spirituality workshop.

And just as quick as that, I sent out the text to a few
local ladies, and lo, there is a workshop.

Already I feel better. This is something I know how to do. I know how to host things, be they a
party or a workshop or a day at the amusement park, I know how to organize. I
also know how to facilitate this workshop, having done it several times before.
It’s time for me to flex the muscles of things I know how to do and how to
share.

I said it aloud last night as I dried my face of tears, I need to
do something esteemable, something that gives me self-esteem. Hosting a
workshop wherein a group of women and I explore what blocks and excites us is
something that gives me self-esteem. It’s self-serving in that I get to feel
good about offering this, and it’s selfless in that they get to take away from
it something they might not have gotten somewhere else.

I needed this.
Already I’m thinking of the structure of it, if I will change some of the
exercises, about going to the store to buy tea light candles for the closing circle. I
know how to do this. I am not a useless lump watching Downton Abbey and 30Rock (although, that’s exactly what I was yesterday, and I don’t entirely
regret it!!).

There are things that I know how to do. I don’t just have to
be a pitiable/pitying cancer patient. I am and have been more than that, and it’s high
time that I re-prove that to myself. I can do things of value in this world,
however long or short my time here. 

I imagine that I will live to Sunday, and if so,
I can help to enhance and deepen my little corner of the world.