In college, I read Virgina Woolf’s book where this title is
borrowed from. It talked about how women need had been short shifted of various
things… it’s full of great ideas but perhaps the one that sank in the most was
the one that girls needed a room of their own. When Kiana was born, we bought a
house a month before and it was “nested” at her birth. Shortly after the
surgery, her and I picked out decorations and she picked out 95% of them
including the paint color, a moment that as I left it completely up to her sure
made me nervous.
I met with a realtor today Mike Minns and crunched numbers
with him about the house and moving and selling it and motivations. He was also
the father of a little girl and as we walked around the house, it became evident
he was more human than salesman, which perhaps made him better at both. He
became aware that the guy who claims to be driven by logic had bought a house
partly because it had a dog door for the “puppy” he brought from the south
pacific and that the room that clearly had the most effort put into it was his
daughter’s room and the one that had the least was his own. He expressed the
gratefulness he had for his own wife and how much effort she puts into their
parenting together.
In the end, for the time being as we talked, we aren’t listing the house.
I bought it a block away from a really good school a month before she was born so
I could walk her to school and I hope to be able to pull that off. I sat for a
job interview today and we’ll have a follow up but I can’t imagine I’ll take
it. I think I’d be decent at it but they were selling how much money I could
make… that can’t be the only reason to go to work. It was, oddly enough, with
an insurance company and it was a little frustrating to hear how much money
they paid… when I’ve argued with insurance companies so much for the last 18
months. They liked the fact I’d been valedictorian and class president and had
trophies at home and that I was competitive. All of those things are true but
the guy who was Salutatorian well he’s a specialist doctor making 400K a year
and the girl who was vice president is also a doctor and makes about as much.
(I could have never been a doctor, having no capacity to handle blood). My finances aren't great enough to stay unemployed forever... but theoretically because of the time I'm paid off I have time till July 15th and until then I want to take it a little slow because if there's anything I've learned from the exwife and the exjob is that I'm not much of a quitter, so I should be careful where I commit. Employment is stuff because there
are great people where helping was a factor but money was a driving factor as well and it never has been for me. If the love of money is the root of all
evil, I am a saint because I just couldn’t care less. I worked as a salesman for one year... worked hard at it in advertising, even selling the spine of the yellowpages. It enabled me paying for my exes college education without any debt... but I had no passion to go to work everyday. I don’t know if I’m going
to beat this, I kind of work off the original premise of what Friedman said,
we’re hoping to get you to 40. My hopes are high but somewhere in my gut and on
days I feel light headed well… I just don’t know if even 40 is coming and dying
with more toys… well you still die. I keep training for races rather and keep
looking at this bracelet… knowing I never get to be cancer free and telling
myself that there may come a day where I don’t’ get to livestrong but today is
not it. And if I go to work everyday just for a paycheck, is that in anyway living strong?
I don’t know if this is spin or trying to make myself feel
better but I am trying to take this all as a (pun intended) mind opening
experience. I rushed back from Duke to my running group who literally embraced
me, to the Livestrong grand opening, to my family (some which would be gone
very quickly) and to my job who wanted a hundred things signed… Some were easy
to return to, some clearly this cancer and how I mishandled some of it and how I
handled some of it was the last straw. The ones who have stuck with me and I
with them… well it’s improved. I hope that ad that I did with Livestrong has
helped show how great they are. Actually, all of this process has helped me
understand why a big thing that Livestrong does is give people the option to
still have kids after cancer…actually my favorite of the videos that got
released at the same time as mine was one about that (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hPLWtMU1Mg&feature=relmfu).
I am nowhere near ready but a good friend suggested that maybe if I found
someone who helped me raise my child I should be prepared for us to have one of
our own… if I could only grasp that providing for kids isn’t just about money. Although I've appreciated the half truth half lie joke that I need a woman who wants to be a mom but wants a stay at home dad. I'd sign up for that.
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