I hate the last minute, and here I am.

I am the one who stays up late, turns the assignment in early and never gets to that last minute

But here I am.

If I don’t write this today, there will be nothing to send. And I will miss my self-imposed deadline.

I dislike that last minute but it is still motivating me with its very existence.

I remember a line from an old movie:

 ‘In Italy, for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed. But they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love. They had 500 years of democracy and peace. And what did that produce? The cuckoo clock!’

It’s true.

And that cuckoo clock reminds me to pay attention to the time so I can keep away from the deadline.

My struggle is with that clock. Most certainly it is tonight.

I should have let some other obligations be delayed so I could do this essay on time.

There were a lot of obligations this past week.

So I’m up late, with half a cold with my creativity stifled.

I’m not feeling like the rennnaissance.

I’m hearing the cuckoo. And that is my muse tonight.

It can be enough.

I look forward to having the time and energy, to give that cuckoo bird better food than mere acknowledgement.

That will have to be enough, mechanical bird.

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Last year at this time I was counting the days until I could get off Chemo, wanting to have more energy and be past feeling sick and tired all the time

November 2023, I had my thyroidectomy surgery

That was last year

Right now I’m counting the days until I finish the black belt test. so that my muscles don’t have to be sore and all the time. It’s a different kind of sick and tired.

Three days after I test for my black belt I am scheduled for a second thyroid surgery.

There is a pattern here.

I shake my head at myself. There is always something. 

After all, what did I expect? A broad grassy meadow of sunlight and gentle breezes?

I’m chasing after adventure.

Shakespeare said

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.

The cancer and surgeries seem to be thrust upon me. The Black belt training is something I’m working to achieve. I am taking the skills I was born with to try to achieve greatness

I would have picked a different adventure than cancer if I’d had the choice. Since I didn’t, I will hope to do something great with it.

The martial arts make me think about life differently.

So has cancer and chemo.

After I left the meeting with the oncologist—the one where she told me it would be 5 months of chemotherapy—I broke down in sobbed. My husband held me as I gasped out that I felt trapped in my own body, in a prison with no chance to escape and taste life.

And it was not as bad as I imagined, even though it was tough.

As I look at it, preparing for the black belt testing is a lighter lift. I could say that the black belt testing is the life I was hoping to get to.

Since I am healthier and stronger (e.g. black belt achievement) I am hopeful I will recover faster from the 2024 surgery that I did from the one last year. That one wasn’t so bad even. 

It’s not a repeat. It’s a familiar pattern. I’d like to see over the horizon to a new pattern, with next year being different.

On my trip to England, I made a point to visit Canterbury Cathedral. The vaulted ceiling and gorgeous history haunted me, soaring in my memory when I tried to sleep.

But it wasn’t the architecture that drew me. 

Of course It was because of Chaucer. That jester poet who marked a line in path of the Norman noble courts of Britain and forever carved his name with The Canterbury Tales.

Chaucer took the tropes of his day, all the characters that his audience were so familiar with, and let them speak English to one another as they pilgrimaged to the cathedral.

Not the snooty French of the nobility and their sycophants—the language of the people who hadn’t gotten that far. The characters poke fun at each other with stories they’ve learned. 

Tonight I joined a book discussion of this story. What did this book still have for us today?

It was a challenge to make it to the zoom meeting because my daughter had only the night before had the vomits pretty bad. I’d stayed up to soothe her, but I had missed out on the reading. 

A sick pitiful pool of a child, she felt better but was weak and in need of company.

A perfect time to read aloud that last section of the book that was assigned. I need to do it and she’s not in a position to resist.

I warned her that it was bawdy and naughty, which intrigued rather than alarmed her.

And we began the Reeve’s tale. I pointed out the double entendres, and we puzzled out some of the more confusing story points. 

For being such high literature, the tales have a lot of primitive humor. 

Farts, fooling and carnal relations

Oh

Chaucer is perfect for teenagers.

I’m going to go read the rest of it.

I never stop talking about art. I look for it with every glance. And I reach for it.

Art is another word for beauty.

Another word for truth.

Good art doesn’t have to be appreciated by everyone. It challenges people.

It challenges me.

Four years ago, I fell into the art of fighting.

Martial arts.It’s in the name, but I didn’t think of it as the kind of art I talk about here. I only knew it challenged me and I wanted to get better at it. I saw that I was amateur on almost every level.

Except

The willingness to try.

I showed up. I practiced. I know I’m never going to be the best at this. But I’d like to be the best I can be at it

There is a saying

A black belt is a white belt who didn’t quit.

There was a lot I didn’t expect in these four years. I suppose the first part was the surprise of the COVID lockdown and pandemic. I sure didn’t expect that.

Which led to the unexpected engagement with the art of fighting. I didn’t think I had to right to fight, honestly. Society expected and I accepted that I was to be a nice girl. Practice deference and be demure.

I didn’t like to be demure but I had fallen into the compliance habit.

Learning to fight and practicing it like the art it wants to be has changed me.  A Martial art is not just one move. I can do it badly, and still know that doing something badly is better than doing nothing in a fight situation.

And still I see the art in it and am challenged to try to do it better and better. I want to learn the principles and see what it takes to get better. I have found the art in it and am changed.

I started a new job October 1^st, which is my eighth position since 2020.

I have experienced many different work environments. You can imagine I was trepidatious before I met my new team.

Would they be the kind that hoard information? My field—Information Technology—has a stock character of the tech who hoards his knowledge. This guy has to keep information to himself and not share it with anybody. Seems like he is sure that his job depends on being the only one with the code or the password.

I worked with this guy once. He was so sure he had to be the only one with the codes, even for the systems I was responsible for that he changed the codes on my systems when I wasn’t looking.

I’ve had the manager who didn’t want me there, because her boss  hired me to document the processes so we could be more predictable and efficient. 

Write down her secret knowledge?  I recall her long fingernails drumming on the meeting table as I talked with the team to get the details lined up. 

THRUMRUMRumrum

THRUMRUMRumrum

After months of redirections and misinformation, I created a 200-item flow of information. I was fired that afternoon.

Top performers want to hire top performers. Mid performers want to hire people who won’t make them look bad. I have been underestimated so many times by managers who think I will be mid.  It confused me my sensible solutions were received with delight by my teammates. Then time would pass and the manager fired me. 

I learned not to fear getting knocked down. It hurts, but I do better getting back up as quick as I can.

The office I’m in now is a city job. They are long termers and very used to each other. They even seem to like each other. I’m feeling good about it. 

But they warned me: the holidays are coming and the potlucks are epic. 

They are looking forward to what I will bring.

I have three fruit trees:
A lemon tree, a mandarin tree, and a pink orange tree. I cherish them all, and fawn over their flowers and fruit.

I’ve learned that the mandarin tree will rotate in fruit. One year, it will bear a lot of fruit, and the next, far less. Last year was a low fruit year. In fact, the lowest harvest yet, only ten or twelve.

Last year was a tough year for both of us, really.

But a funny thing happened. I had counted the fruits, waiting for the hard green balls to turn color and show bright in the midst of the green leaves. Then I would have a true count of the number.

And I picked and ate the delicious little fruit.

But some of them were small and didn’t turn orange. That was strange. I thought they might dry up and fall off.

That would have been sad but it happens.

I kept an eye on those green balls. They stayed on the tree as the flowers came for next year’s harvest. And then the flowers became little baby fruit.

And the green fruits stayed on. Like ancestor fruit alongside the child fruits.

They were making up their own timing.

It’s October now. These ancestor mandarins have begun to orange. Not in a hurry. Not all the way and not too fast

.

See that? An ancestor fruit above this years young fruit.

I took a plunge and picked one. It was a real fruit! Yes, a bit dry, but a worthy example of its kind.

There at least as many of these late ripening ancestor mandarins as the whole harvest last year.

I thought I knew this tree. I thought I knew how this world works and what I could expect.
It’s just a little tree, but it made a different choice. I am amazed that such a thing could happen, and I have no idea why.

I’d like to have some kind of wisdom to pull out of this situation. It’s not my wisdom though. My mandarin tree is the mysterious one.

What made the choice to take the road less traveled? The flowers? The fruit? The sun and the moon in the sky? The taste of the water the tree pulled up?

What made these fruits persevere and ripen when it wasn’t the correct time?

Like I said, it’s not my secret. But I did watch the story as it unfolded. I took the time to see the flowers as they were born and speak to my tree. I noticed the fruit as they grew and lived their life.

My part of the mystery and the miracle was taking the time to observe.

To pay attention.

And it was so worth it, to notice. Now I can stand with the strength of my little tree when I have hope for the unexpected and unusual.

I’ve seen it ihappen.

“This is going to be a busy week,” my husband said. “And that’s before we discover the things we don’t know yet.”

He was right. And those things we don’t know yet? There are there. They are part of the things. I catch myself in denial of them all the time.

When I slam the car door, and glance at the clock thinking “I’ll still be on time if…”
I am in denial of those things I don’t know

I could call those things the “known unknowns.”

I’m not too indulgent in that denial. My husband is, in my opinion, too cautious.

It’s a fine line to walk, to be ready for the unknown but not too wary.

Many years ago a big unknown came into being in our lives.
That time he said: “Change is opportunity.”

I was convinced that this particular change meant disaster.

Instead, he was proven right.

I learned that opportunity is in the awareness of it.
So is disaster, now that I think about it.

When I see a disaster, and I commit to it being a disaster, it will be what I see. It will be a disaster.

And if I see an opportunity, when I insist on it being an opportunity, then it will transform into the opportunity I see it to be.

I love to plan for things. I will organize the pieces of my life into piles and make strategies for them. I will fill my time up as full as I can with good things.

Which can sometimes make me almost late to drive to one of those things I planned because I was trying to shoehorn in another things I’d planned.

Not leaving room for the thigns I didn’t plan. The changes I didn’t plan for.

And it’s those changes that create the opportunity for things to get even better.

Change is scary.
Change is opportunity.
Change is inevitable.
Madonna sang it: “Beauty’s where you find it.”

I intend to find the beauty. Thus:

Change is beautiful.

After the big life  adventure of two surgeries, chemo and radiation last year, I’m on the maintenance plan with my doctors. I do appreciate that they are motivated to keep checking on me.  I’ve had them do two different scans already to see if anything suspicious pops up

They decided that second scan was suspicious, and they set me up with a neck Biopsy to check if the thyroid cancer was growing back. This is what maintenance means: keep calm and carry on.

I think of Schroedinger’s cat. I have to be ok with that ever cat or not-cat might be in the box.

That’s an expertise I didn’t have two years ago. 

One thing that helps keep me from thinking too much about whether the thyroid cancer is there is my black belt testing. I know that thyroid cancer is highly treatable, so I decided I could withstand if the cancer needed another treatment.

BUT! The last couple biopsies hurt quite a lot. And with my focus on the black belt training, I don’t want to slow down.

At class the night before the biopsy, Sensei had me practicing a swift kick to the head. We’d done this move before, and it was fun to do the quick unexpected move on one another. 

I always think it’s too hard, but with the Sensei’s encouragement I surprise myself. I can do this!

The next day, lying back the nurse arranged the pillows so that my neck was stretched out to give the team the greatest access to get up in there with a needle. 

I had to sit very very still and let stick a needle in my neck. For a long time.

There was a whole team there doing it very carefully. I had to keep my mind occupied while they did this thing I would rather not be doing.

I remembered that while they were stabbing me in the neck, I could kick them in the head. I had practiced it the night before and gotten even better at it. While I lay there, not moving a muscle I visualized all the small movements it took, the muscles I had to use direct my kick up to a person’s head and make a hit.

It helped a lot to pass the time. 

I will sit here while you do this. I will let it happen. I make the choice to allow it. Because I could choose to kick an attacker in the head. It made a difference to know it was my choice.

But just because the fighting never stops, I got the call while I was finishing this post. Shroedinger cat was in the box. One of those spots was indeed more cancer. I’ll need another surgery in a couple months. I’ll chase that one down and get rid of it too.

It’s hot today. Except, I know this is going to be read when the heat wave is past. I can see that far into the future.

Still, today, this day I am sitting in, and writing in is too hot.

Last year was filled with a lot of medical things that took up the space. Poisoning and surgeries that took my strength. I had to keep my focus on what I could do.

I had to shrink down because the iceberg I was floating on was shrinking. What was possible? Less than yesterday.

What’s possible today? 

How’s today looking? How many steps can I take around this life I’m floating on. 

Huh. I am seeing that it’s more than it used to be. This iceberg is getting bigger

Am I willing to go further than I have before? Am I willing to go further than I did before?

It was a short push when the iceberg was small. It’s longer walk now that it’s bigger.

Is my world as big as it was before? It seems like it might be smaller.

That could be a story I’m telling myself. It’s possible that the borders are bigger, but I’m afraid to push my limits

I wasn’t so afraid when I knew the limits were small. I walled off opportunities from myself for a while. I assumed that it was too far. It was too far at that time, and I didn’t want to be frustrated.

That was before. What’s my story now?

Like the old explorers, I might be putting mythological monsters on the edges of what I know. It could be excuses.

I don’t know where the edge is until I hit it. And it could be different from day to day.

It is easier now that I don’t’ have to push against the medication. But the truth is, I still want to be strong and the best I can be.  It’s still true: I don’t know my limits.

But I do know I can go further than I could  a year ago.

I’ve done a lot of job searches in the last ten years, and they are always challenging. But this one feels painful. I’m putting a lot of effort into this and getting very little response back. I put in applications and not much happens.

To be fair, I have had two artificial intelligence recruiters interview me. The Human Resources robot is a piece of dark irony that lifts the one side of my smile.

I’m grateful to past Murphy for maintaining progress on my martial arts journey. The rest of this year I am pushing on to the big uplevel of black belt. Preparing to achieve a black belt involves a lot of repetitions to gain strength and achieve excellence.

Also, it takes going to classes 4-6 days a week. That’s a lot of classes. I’ll be honest, I take guilty pleasure when the teacher starts monologuing. It’s nice to get a rest.

Then again, one of the parts of my training is to start to lead classes on my own. Do I want to avoid monologuing? Or do I want do a better version of it?

I am reminded of something I learned in acting class: the difference between a soliloquy and a monologue.

It’s subtle. Both involve one person talking at length to an audience. But the soliloquy is meant to be informed by the audience.

The monologue is a favorite of villians. Villians are bad at seeing others’ point of view. Their monologues often expose the character flaws and blindspots.

A soliloquy is meant to take in the reactions and emotional responses of the audience. As a teacher, I’d like to be aware of how my students are taking it in.

This brings me back to the job hunt. When I do get an interview, I have a set of stories and answers to the questions that I am asked.

When I am at my best, I can understand what the interviewer is hoping to hear in my response. Then again, I am often too absorbed in my own nervous insecurities to see the interviewer’s point of view. I can talk to fast and babble on.

All through my martial arts journey, I have learned that the training applies to my life in surprising ways. To be a good teacher, I see that I can also listen to how I am talking, and how others are hearing me. There are times when I must speak uninterrupted. And yet, it is a ninja move to be aware of the other;s subltle responses in the moment

It might be to duck and avoid a punch to the face. It could also be noticing the eyes sliding away and down in the middle of an explanation that is no longer relevant.

Both are valuable and difficult to catch. That’s part of the repetitious training I’m doing, is to get it right sometimes, and hopefully more often. I want to be more of the hero than the villain.