Ups and Downs

     This week's been full of ups and downs.  As the old year went out, and the new came in, I spent a lot of time reflecting on life.  There are so many things I would have liked to accomplish, but didn't.  There are so many things I would like to accomplish this year, but I feel overwhelmed even thinking about them all at once.  

     There is so much in life to accomplish.  There are limitless possibilities in life.  Sometimes it feels like those possibilities become more limited as we grow up.  That leads to frustration, and a feeling of incompleteness.  That's what I was experiencing last week, and earlier this week.  

     From the time I was 5, I wanted to be a doctor.  I know that a lot of kids want to be doctors and lawyers and astronauts and all that when they grow up, but I really, truly, wanted to be a doctor.  I never grew out of it.  I think it first started when my grandfather died during a heart operation.  I was little, and I remember thinking that grandpa was invincible.  He was a slender, healthy man.  My grandparents on the other side were overweight, and we (being innocent little kids) would call them fat grandma and grandpa, and skinny grandma and grandpa.  It sounds horrible now, but back then, it was just what we called them, and they didn't seem to mind (at least not to a 5 y/o's sensibility).  Well, the grandpa that died was the "skinny" grandpa.  He had a heart attack, and we went to see him in the hospital before his operation.  Everyone was crying, and I wondered why because he looked perfectly fine.  He died on the operating table.  I remember thinking that I wished I could do something about it.  I must have said something to my parents because they told me I should be a doctor, then I could.  So I decided I wanted to be a doctor.

     My "fat" grandma died of cancer when I was a teenager.  I remember going to the library and looking up things about cancer.  I tried learning things so that I could help her.  I was still young, and couldn't do much to stop the inevitable. 

     When I started high school, I had my whole life planned.  I took advanced Chemistry, Biology, Math, and even English classes.  I even did an externship my senior year, and graduated high school with 52 college credits, and an applied science degree as a medical assistant.  Now days, that doesn't mean much (I don't think they even require anything to be an M.A. anymore, but I could be wrong), but back then it was a competitive field.

     I worked for a few doctors, and then I served an L.D.S. mission in Brazil.  By this point I was certain I wanted to work with cancer patients.  I would bore my missionary companions about all of the ideas I had about treating cancer patients.  I got to use a bit of my medical experience in Brazil when I became the Assistant to the President, and I was partially responsible for the well-being of the 254 young men and women serving missions in our area.

     When I got home from Brazil, life happened.  My girlfriend, now wife, was waiting for me, and we got married just 2 months after I returned.  I came home on a Wednesday, went looking for jobs Friday, and started working the following week as a salesman so that I could afford a ring.  I did fairly well as a salesman.  I worked for Qwest (the old local phone company) and did so well that they invited me to their corporate offices in Denver to share my "secrets of success" with them.  They turned me into a traveling sales rep. to teach their other offices what I was doing.  They paid me a lot of money.  I got distracted from my goal.

     When I got tired of traveling, I quit.  I wanted to get back on track.  The only problem was that we had bought a house based on my large salary with Qwest.  I had to stay in sales to keep up our life-style, and it still wasn't enough.  On top of that, the sales hours were horrendous, and I still couldn't do school.  

     It was about this time that my health issues began to become a problem.  I had started vomiting almost every day, and had all sorts of other digestive issues.  I was going to doctors almost non-stop.  It was about this time that my wife and I decided it was time for me to really get back on track.  I quit my job to do school full-time and she went back to work.  I was looking for a fast way to catch up on lost time, and found a computer programming school that would give me a 4-year degree in 2 because we did like 21-27 credit hours every trimester.  I figured that the computer skills would be good, and convinced myself that medical schools would like the diversity when considering me when I applied.

     My health took a turn for the worst, and I eventually had to quit the chaotic schedule of so many credit hours at once.  I don't know if the stress, lack of sleep, or other issues that accompany school, made my illness worse, or if it was just the progressive aspect of the disease, but I was terribly ill when I quit.  I had to go back to sales, and worked for an inbound sales company which allowed me to work from home.  I had my first seizure shortly thereafter.  

     After the seizures started, I had troubles concentrating, and began to forget things easily.  The other issues with my digestive system got worse, and I was slowly wasting away.  Within a couple of years I was bedridden.  The nausea and throwing up got so bad that I couldn't even do the phone job at home.  The doctors didn't think I'd make it.  My blood was so thick that I had a couple of mini-strokes.

     Instead of becoming a doctor, I became a patient.  I was devastated.  I began to feel worthless, and stopped dreaming about the future.  I even became suicidal.  My wife helped me through those rough years, and helped me to start writing.  It was my second most favorite thing to do.  

     I wrote Dragon Sight while I was sick.  I have it as the second book in my series, but I actually wrote it first.  Cal, my protagonist, is blind.  I basically expressed what I was feeling through his interactions with the world, and his frustrations over his handicap.  I had dreams, and felt like there was something special inside of me that I no longer had access to.  Cal has a hidden power within, but he can't control it.  In his mind, he is just a worthless blind boy.  That was how I felt back then.

     A lot of things have changed from then to now.  We moved to a lower elevation to help with my thick blood.  I got on the right meds, totally changed my eating and sleeping habits, and through a combination of holistic and medical help I've returned to a somewhat normal, if limited, lifestyle.  I still can't do most of what I want, but I'm no longer bedridden.

     I wrote my second book as I was recovering.  Dragon Warrior was about my inner strength returning.  Apoc, my second protagonist, is almost flawless.  He does everything right.  He never lets anyone down.  He's decisive, driven, and pretty much fantastic.  He's who I want to be - who I feel I am inside.

     So, as I'm looking at 2015, I'm wondering what I want to do with my life, now.  Am I stuck as Cal, or can I move on and be Apoc?  

     I can't be a doctor.  I get tired after going grocery shopping, so I would never have the energy for all of the running around doctors do, let alone the horrible schooling schedule.  I can't even do most jobs other people can do.  I still have a passion for medicine, though.  

     I have also cultivated my passion for writing.  I don't know which I like more anymore.  I face the difficulties every aspiring writer faces.  How do I get published?  Now that I'm self-published, how do I advertise?  Where do we make room for the money it takes to pay for editors, cover designers, advertising, etc.?  It's all very daunting.  On top of all of that, I have difficulty writing because my head is muddled most days either from meds or the disease.  I still struggle with self-doubt, and self-esteem issues.  And I'm trying to write a third book which ties the first two together nicely, but I haven't yet reconciled the two personalities within me, nor have I resolved which is winning.  The third book has Apoc and Cal on opposite sides of the same conflict, and one of them has to be declared a winner.  I have a lot of ideas as to how I want the story to play out, but because I've patterned the first two books after my own inner conflicts, I wanted to keep the same theme for the third.  The problem lies in the fact that my own issues have not been resolved.  As a result, I frequently have "writer's block".

     So this last week, as I've been contemplating what I want to do with my life over the next year, I've had a lot of ups and downs.  

     I want to continue to improve physically, and with my health, but I don't know what else I can do.  Doctors are happy that I've returned to as much normalcy as I have, but I'm not quite satisfied because I still miss out on so much. (I know I should be grateful for what I've regained, but I'm just running you through my thoughts and feelings here.)

     I want to progress with my writing, but finances, and that pesky writer's block have been getting in the way.

     I want to find a way to get back into the medical field, on the other side of the exam table, but my health is still a major issue.

     What I finally realized the last couple of days is that I'm trying to swallow the world whole.  It's too much to take in all at once.  I've done a lot of research on goal setting to share here on my blog, and I've learned that if you get overwhelmed, you need to break your goals down into steps.  That's what I'm hoping to do in 2015.  

     I want to finish book 3.  It's something I have control over.  If I finish writing it, I may have better perspective to adapt it to my life.  I have minimal control over the financial limitations to edit, design, and promote the book, but who knows, by the time I've finished writing it I may have made enough from the first two books to have it professionally edited and designed.  The one thing I can do is finish it.

     As far as the medical aspect of my life... I think I've come up with a solution for that, too.  I see a lot of sick people when I go in to the hospital.  I thought I might share some of my talent with them.  I read indie books every week, maybe I can read to them.  I love to write short stories, and have had fun writing with my daughter, so maybe I can write with the kids who need someone to take their minds off of their scary surroundings.  I haven't worked it all out yet, but I might be able to write a book with a child, and share the royalties with them to help with medical bills.  Children's books aren't my specialty, but even if they don't get published, I'm sure it will be good for the kids to do something besides sit in bed and watch T.V.  I did that for almost 5 years and I can say, with some authority, that it sucks.  T.V. gets very boring after a while.

     I just want my life to mean something again.  I need dreams.  I need a future.  Everybody does.  Goals are a big deal to me right now.