The Coming Year: Panic or Paradise?
Warm today in Central Texas … high blue skies … traffic humming outside on the highway … inside it’s quiet … the last round of holiday merry-making has ended … 2009 is two days old …
We start 2009 with the same war we had this time last year. We have a new president, but will he end the war? Expectations are low.
We also start 2009 with a financial crisis—the worst since the Great Depression, we are told, so bad we have not even begun to feel its effects. A complete collapse of the system, utter ruin, massive deprivation, panic, calamity, riots, martial law, concentration camps, genocide, all await us in the coming year.
Well, maybe it won’t be as bad as all that. I sure hope not …
Meanwhile, in my personal life, what a year it’s been—I retired from my day job, went to Europe, worked on various projects. So much happened. And continues to happen …
I started my treatment this week.
It happened in an oncology center in a big room with other patients, all sitting in recliners receiving their treatments.
My treatment is phlebotomy. Bloodletting, basically, only without the leeches. They take about a pint of blood. It takes ten minutes, then they give you some fruit juice and you wait ten minutes till they say you can go.
The woman next to me had cancer. So did most of the people, to judge by the hairless heads.
You count your blessings in a place like that …
And that's what it was for me, a blessing that this condition was caught before it was too late. Good thing I had that physical.
I didn’t want a physical. I didn’t feel sick and if there was something wrong I didn’t want to know about it.
But my wife insisted—get a physical, get a physical. Finally, I gave in, and you know the rest. It saved my life.
Whew—that was a close one …
Of course, most good things come with a price. In my case, it was Happy Hour.
I wasn't drinking immoderately, for the most part. A great many people drink at the same level I was drinking and never experience one negative consequence.
But for me, with a hereditary inability to process iron, drinking alcohol—which actively interferes with the breakdown of iron—doing this was, for me, a death-defying stunt.
And now, for my next act, I will drink a case of cyanide, play Russian roulette, kiss a cobra, and jump out a ten-story window …
Aw well. It’s all booze under the bridge now. What matters is, I’m alive. The weeks of uncertainty—waiting for the biopsy, waiting for the results, wondering, not knowing—are over, and the results are that I'm going to be okay. The New Year finds me with a new lease on life. My worst-case scenario did not happen …
And maybe the world will be okay too. Maybe the worst-case scenario for 2009 won't come to pass. Worst-case scenarios often don't.
Anyway, it doesn't help to worry about it, and with the same energy we use to worry and imagine the worst, we can also imagine the best and make it happen …
When I started writing this, it was sunny. Now the sun is setting. The second day of 2009 draws to a close. Time marches on.
Happy New Year …
We start 2009 with the same war we had this time last year. We have a new president, but will he end the war? Expectations are low.
We also start 2009 with a financial crisis—the worst since the Great Depression, we are told, so bad we have not even begun to feel its effects. A complete collapse of the system, utter ruin, massive deprivation, panic, calamity, riots, martial law, concentration camps, genocide, all await us in the coming year.
Well, maybe it won’t be as bad as all that. I sure hope not …
Meanwhile, in my personal life, what a year it’s been—I retired from my day job, went to Europe, worked on various projects. So much happened. And continues to happen …
I started my treatment this week.
It happened in an oncology center in a big room with other patients, all sitting in recliners receiving their treatments.
My treatment is phlebotomy. Bloodletting, basically, only without the leeches. They take about a pint of blood. It takes ten minutes, then they give you some fruit juice and you wait ten minutes till they say you can go.
The woman next to me had cancer. So did most of the people, to judge by the hairless heads.
You count your blessings in a place like that …
And that's what it was for me, a blessing that this condition was caught before it was too late. Good thing I had that physical.
I didn’t want a physical. I didn’t feel sick and if there was something wrong I didn’t want to know about it.
But my wife insisted—get a physical, get a physical. Finally, I gave in, and you know the rest. It saved my life.
Whew—that was a close one …
Of course, most good things come with a price. In my case, it was Happy Hour.
I wasn't drinking immoderately, for the most part. A great many people drink at the same level I was drinking and never experience one negative consequence.
But for me, with a hereditary inability to process iron, drinking alcohol—which actively interferes with the breakdown of iron—doing this was, for me, a death-defying stunt.
And now, for my next act, I will drink a case of cyanide, play Russian roulette, kiss a cobra, and jump out a ten-story window …
Aw well. It’s all booze under the bridge now. What matters is, I’m alive. The weeks of uncertainty—waiting for the biopsy, waiting for the results, wondering, not knowing—are over, and the results are that I'm going to be okay. The New Year finds me with a new lease on life. My worst-case scenario did not happen …
And maybe the world will be okay too. Maybe the worst-case scenario for 2009 won't come to pass. Worst-case scenarios often don't.
Anyway, it doesn't help to worry about it, and with the same energy we use to worry and imagine the worst, we can also imagine the best and make it happen …
When I started writing this, it was sunny. Now the sun is setting. The second day of 2009 draws to a close. Time marches on.
Happy New Year …
posted by Mack White at 6:47 PM
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