Soon but not yet

I saw my foot doctor on Friday and she said that rock climbing will be fine and I won't damage what she fixed by climbing. So that's good news! She said the scar will improve as the stitches inside continue to dissolve, but I am not that worried about that. I'm just glad that I can walk without being in pain.

A success

I am happy to report that the surgery I had on my foot seems to be a success. The joint no longer hurts when I walk. That being said, I do have numbness in my foot (part of the ball of my foot and 3 toes) which my doctor says makes no sense because the numbness is no where near the incision site. That's such a great response to get from a doctor. We concluded that it's from the swelling pushing on certain nerves. It takes a long time for the swelling to go away so I guess I accept that as a possible answer. But we will see what she says Friday when I go back for my 6 week follow-up and I tell her that none of the feeling has come back.

Last week the ball of my foot hurt really badly to walk, this week it feels okay, maybe just a little weird from the numbness. And it feels strange to walk around barefoot because that is when the lack of feeling is most noticeable. Plus I haven't walked around barefoot in nearly 6 weeks. The first few steps out of bed are extremely painful (but maybe that is normal stiffness? Not sure.) but then it improves. But overall I am glad I had the surgery even though I really didn't want to do it.

My only worry is rock climbing. Like when I can go back to it and will I damage what she fixed by doing it. I'm a little worried about the answer. There are screws in there so you would think I wouldn't damage it by climbing but who knows.

Is it obvious that I have nothing to do at work.

Why I feel so desperate

I had a discouraging conversation with a colleague at work about moving. It's someone that I trust completely not to say anything. The thing is, as I expected, she had no idea what the reaction will be. It was not helpful and also discouraging. I guess I wasn't really expecting it to be helpful, though it would have been nice to hear something positive. Not that she discouraged me from doing it, it was just that the conversation was discouraging. There are factors I am not considering, because I am so desperate to move, which my colleague pointed out. Factors like my hours and the ability or inability to hit them, the economy, the fact that one person in our group (her) already telecommutes, the fact that management has to approve it even if the two people I work for say okay. At least on that front I can say that the head of my practice group has my back. He would stand up for me, if he is okay with it that is. But he would stand up for me regardless if something happens around here (like more lay offs etc.). I know he would. I am pretty sure he is the reason that I didn't take a pay cut in April. And then there is the issue of timing, perhaps the most important of all. These things I am not considering.

I feel desperate about this and that is not a good way to go into it. It's not good to formulate a plan out of desperation but I feel like that is what I am doing. I feel so desperate that I am getting ready to lay it all on the line. After the conversation I had today with my colleague, I really have to take a step back and put some thought into how exactly to best go about this in order to achieve the outcome that I want without damaging my working relationships with these people. Because I do after all want to keep this job despite any complaining I may do about it.

But the way that I think about this is the way that I think about most things. If I find out I have cancer again tomorrow, what will I have wished or what would I have done differently? I think about nearly everything this way. Maybe I will post a list one day of the things that I would have done differently and then I'll go ahead and do them (you know, since I am lucky enough to have the possibility to actually change those things). Anyway, I think anyone who has been through what I have been through, and early in life, probably looks at life through that lens now and then. If I find out I have cancer again tomorrow, I will have wished that I had spent more time with family and my closest friends, who happen to be not in Chicago. I will have wished that my job was not the centerpiece of my life and that I actually had a life. I will have wished I had been happy. That's the real kicker for me. I have wasted so much time being unhappy. This is how I figure out in advance what my regrets will be, by asking the question of what I would have done if I had only had the opportunity. I've never been able to escape the idea that I will get cancer again no matter what my doctor says. I can't escape it. My time is limited. I know we all know that, but I know it in a way that a lot of people don't understand. It makes me feel desperate and sad. It's not okay for me to stay in Chicago and continue to be unhappy. It just isn't. I have to make this happen or I will regret tremendously the time that I lost. Time that would have really meant something to me.

I'm going a little crazy with boredom

This weekend I decided to do a whole lot of nothing because by Friday, my foot was really in pretty bad shape from walking around the office all week every day. Well, I am going crazy with boredom and anxiety right now. This is the downside of being as introverted as I am. This one moment when I actually need someone to talk to, which happens, um, almost never, I have no one to call.

A job but not a life

I have been thinking about my life here in Chicago, or lack thereof, since I want to move out of here. And I realized, I have a job here, but not a life. I don't even have rock climbing these days because of the surgery on my foot. I used to have more of a life here, but it was work to maintain it and I sort of let it slip away.... I just don't go to as many meetings as I used to and I don't spend time with the people I used to spend time with. I haven't put effort into staying in touch with them. I've tried to think about the possibility of work saying no, you can't move, and what I would do since I probably wouldn't be able to find another job. I wonder if I could find a way to be happy here. I guess the answer to that is I would have to. I know some people would label this taking the geographic cure and wherever you go there you are and blah blah. But that isn't what this is.

Right now the focus of my life is my job. That's all I have really. It's all I have and it's not even what I want it to be. I have no real life to speak of. I want to have a life and then have my job, the significance of which would be diminished and perhaps it would be more enjoyable that way. The thing is though, I want to have that life somewhere else. I imagine going back to Ann Arbor, which has its definite downsides, and I would instantly have a lot more of a life than I have here. It's like I have this already made life there that I have managed to hang on to enough that I could fit right back into it as if I never left. Going to Vermont would be a little more like here in that I would only have my brother and sister-in-law and would basically have to make a life, which is, well, what I am having a hard time doing here. So would I be able to pull it off there and would it make me happy? I have no way of knowing in advance I guess.

I'm so torn over where to go and what to do and how quickly to try to make the move. Ann Arbor makes the most sense but I wonder if there are too many demons there. I miss it though. There are things about it that I miss. I never in a million years thought I would be going back there, like ever. Vermont on the other hand would be like a whole new world and I am not sure I have it in me to start over again.

$101.94

Darn it. I almost made it out of Target without going over $100. I don't know what it is but I can never get out of Target under $100. And, I forgot one of the very things I went there for. Ugh.

I'm on a drug for that

I wish I wrote a happy blog where I found cool and fun things to do and then wrote about them. But I don't.

I'm stagnating. I'm not moving forward or backward. I'm just not moving at all.

I feel depressed lately. By lately I mean in the past week or so. I've been sleeping more than normal. I've been sleeping like I slept when I first started taking meds which I thought was probably just an adjustment period. But how can I be depressed? I am on a drug for that. That drug keeps me up all night so I am also on a drug for that. And, I'm on another drug to keep me from cleaning my entire house top to bottom in 2 hours including scrubbing the bathroom floor with a toothbrush just because it's FUN!! That drug kind of takes the happiness away, sort of. And then I have a drug for anxiety if I don't want to feel that because God forbid I ever feel anything. I guess I am still OCD though, so at least I have that. I'm not on a drug for that.

Re-entry

I should have known that coming back to work after working at home for a month was going to be difficult. It was difficult even after vacation. Extremely difficult after my medical leave. But what I didn't really know was that I was going to hate it quite so much. I don't like the office environment. At all.

Don't get me wrong of course, I am grateful for my job.

That being said, I am not happy with it. I feel like a broken record since I have been over this before.

But it's on my mind because I just had my annual review. Which went fine. I get the same comments I get every year which amount to keep up the good work and oh by the way you should find some time to write some articles. Uh, yeah right.

See they have this plan for me that I am going to make partner at some point and slowly over the years that has become the exact opposite of my plan.

My plan, as you know, is to move away from here but keep this job. Telecommute, cut my hours back and basically hang out until a decision has to be made about whether I will make partner. At which point I will hopefully keep my job and be whatever you call the people who don't make partner but want to stick around. I would be perfectly happy if I never made a penny more than I do right now. If I could just freeze myself in this job right now, except in another location, that would be perfect.

I can assure you that I probably won't be able to make partner if I continue to refuse to write articles, which is what I fully intend to do. For the third year in a row I have been told to write articles and I am just going to not do it. I do have a half written article (that I am not going to finish) and I did write a short form of an article which we call an alert and it never got published. So why bother. I am supposed to be writing articles in my spare time. What spare time? It takes all the time that I have to try to bill 2000 hours.

My spare time these days is being taken up by trying to figure out where to move too. Vermont where my brother and sister-in-law live (which I guess I feel a little weird following them out there), or back to Ann Arbor where I'm from. Hmm. I can't decide.

My obsessive personality

I have an obsessive personality. If I get an idea in my head, to either do something, get something or fix something, I can't get it out of my head until it is done, fixed or gotten. I've been borrowing (stealing) Internet from the neighbor because my router broke. I don't know when it broke exactly but it was a little while ago. It was at least a few weeks that I was borrowing access because that's how I was connected for work, through the neighbor... until the neighbor's Internet went down and didn't come back up... on Friday when I was supposed to be working. Inconsistent access to the Internet is not an option. What did we do before the Internet and instant messaging? I freak out when my Internet goes down, even if it is briefly.

I basically did no work on Friday because I was fighting with the Internet all day, trying get on some other neighbor's connection and it just wasn't working. I also need the Internet to connect to the tivo to download the program information. I borrowed the neighbor's Internet for that also. So while I could have waited until next weekend for a new router, and I could have waited to set it up, it had to be bought and hooked up immediately. It could have waited because I have a backup Internet card, but still, it was urgent.

I spent all day getting the router and making it work with both computers and the tivo. It required a call to my Internet provider and a call to Apple to get the thing to work and a lot of frustration. But, finally, we are online again! And I just need to think of the next thing to obsess over!

Back to work

I keep meaning to post but I don't have anything to post about. I think my days of working at home are coming to a close. I am probably going back to the office on Monday because I can now wear sneakers fairly successfully all day. That just means that the pain is tolerable, but it still hurts. My joint doesn't hurt anymore though from what I can tell. It's a different kind of pain and hopefully normal and temporary.

The first week of working at home went very unproductively (because I was working on the couch in front of the TV) but the past three have gone just fine, making me feel more and more like moving and working from home would be a good option. I don't miss the chaos and stress of the office. I don't miss freaking out about what time I am going to be able to le

ave. I don't miss having to get ready every day. I think moving and working from home is probably the best thing I could do for myself. The question of where to move though remains unanswered as of right now.

And of course, I need to get work to agree to it. I don't think this will be

a problem. They won't love it, but I think they will let me do it. I am lucky that it is pretty impossible to replace me and that the partner would have a heart attack if I quit. I am in a pretty good spot as far as that goes. I think they would probably rather let me move than have me quit.

Anyway, the cat is certainly going to miss me working at home.