Before you go accusing me of being ungrateful

Before you accuse me of being ungrateful, let me just say that I am grateful for my job. Now I am going to complain about it. Or not complain exactly, it's just that I'm unhappy. And yes, I think it is possible to be both grateful and unhappy. I've been unhappy for a while now and I don't know what to do about it - or if there is even anything I can do for that matter. It all started when I went on leave. Well before I went on leave actually when I nearly lost my mind. Ever since I came back from leave, I have been unhappy at work. Something changed while I was away from work and I'm not exactly sure what. Objectively I know I have a great job, however, I think it lost its importance in my life. Which actually is probably a good thing, I just haven't replaced it.

I had this idea in my mind when I went on leave that I would process what I went through with having had breast cancer. Well that didn't happen. It wasn't for a lack of trying, I was trying, I'm still trying, it's just that it didn't happen and it isn't happening now. Maybe it isn't going to happen. Maybe I am trying too hard. Maybe I processed it in my own way already and that's that. Maybe for me processing it means not processing it at all. But although that didn't happen for me while I was away, what I did realize was that in the scheme of things, the relative importance of my job is practically not existent. It simply doesn't matter to me anymore. Now granted I still feel guilty every time I take a day off and yes I feel guilty when I leave early - but it's actual importance in my life is nil. I don't live for my job, I don't love it, I don't even care to work all that hard. It doesn't define my life anymore the way that it used to. It used to be who I was. This therapist that I saw very briefly said I should say, I work as a...instead of I am a.... That some how then I would feel less defined by it. Anyway.

But like I said, I haven't replaced my job with anything more important. So there is like this void of unhappiness. And as you know, if you have been reading this, I live with this constant fear and anxiety of getting cancer again. I live with this terrible fear that my life will be cut short and I will have missed my opportunity. My opportunity for what? And when your ship sinks, and it is sinking, as this guy Fain likes to say, what are you going to wish? I won't wish that I was great at my job or financially successful, I won't wish that I was great at anything really, I won't wish that I made a difference, I won't wish that everything turned out just so, I will wish simply that I figured out how to live in the moment and I will wish that I had been happy. At the present, I am failing at both. Let me tell you folks, from my own personal experience with facing my mortality, you don't want to feel the regret of not having been happy.