The Rest of the Story

“Just when I thought I was out … they pull me back in.”
- Michael Corleone, from The Godfather, Part III

I’ve mentioned something in this space a few times previously which bears repeating now: quite often, I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about.

And so it is that I’m resuming this blog. It seems almost ridiculous now, but five weeks ago, this writing gig became such a low priority in my life, so quickly, that I didn’t think there was any way I’d ever consider it remotely important. I got caught in a bit of a whirlwind there for a while.

Remember all that stuff I wrote about my new job, my fellowship, life getting busier, etc? Well, that was all true - but there was a bit more to the story.

It’s complicated, but here it is in a nutshell: last month, my wife was diagnosed with cancer. A pretty bad variety. So bad that we spent a week envisioning a very different future for our family.

We gathered a few additional consultations and eventually saw an expert who assured us that her tumor wasn’t malignant, and a subsequent biopsy confirmed his thoughts. And lately we’re feeling much better – but we’re not finished with it yet. She’ll have surgery very soon, and a recovery that will be challenging, and we still aren’t 100% certain that someone won't come back and tell us that the more ominous diagnosis was really the correct one.

So in the space of several days, blogging seemed remarkably inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. Walking away seemed like the clear decision.

But we're in a better place now. We're at peace with the course of action we're taking. We're very hopeful for a positive outcome. And after the dust of her situation settled a bit, my wife brought up the idea of reviving the blog.

We had a conversation that went something like this:

Her: So how come you’re not blogging anymore?

Me: I felt like I wanted to stop. Seemed like the right thing to do.

Her: You’ll miss your writing. It might be a good outlet for you to maintain.

Me: I don’t know … it's not really that important.

Her: I think you should keep doing it.

It surprised me a bit, in that things I’ve written here have made her uncomfortable at times, to say the least. (Put it this way: let’s say you’re married to a sociopath. Would you want that person running uninhibited all over cyberspace proving exactly how twisted he is – or would you prefer to keep him on a short leash and hope nobody notices? It’s not that different in our case.) But once she said the word, it seemed to make sense. And that’s when I wrote that interim post.

However, like I indicated there, I’m changing my methodology a bit, which I’ll explain more next time (and yes, the comments are turned off intentionally). Even before this whole deal went down, I had been contemplating ways to go about blogging differently, both in terms of content and style. What better time is there to try a new approach than after something gets turned upside down?

Here’s a snapshot of how crazy things have been lately: I haven’t watched VH1 for almost four weeks. That’s like a nun going for a month without saying the rosary. In fact, it was only thanks to last week’s rerun of Saturday Night Live that I realized the guy from My Name Is Earl apparently doubles as the drummer for The Killers.

(What’s worse is that nobody wrote to notify me of this. Can’t there be some sort of pop cultural Amber Alert system to tell us when a new Green Day video is released, when Jon Stewart is a guest on The Late Show, or when a celebrity has to withdraw from a reality show after finding out her husband is at home boinking the nanny? Don’t tell me you wouldn’t sign up for this. Sorry, I’m rambling again …)

I’m guessing that posts will be quite sporadic and even more off-topic than usual until I settle into some sort of groove. I’ll try to maintain the running/tri- related context, but consider this fair warning that the subject matter could be all over the map here for a while. In other words, you have no idea what you’re in for.

Even more frighteningly, neither do I. But I guess that’s what makes things interesting.