[Originally posted on Friday, November 24, 2006]In an attempt to beef up this blog's appearance before I actually tell anyone about its existence, and also to relive some of my wacky antics over on MySpace, I am archiving all of my old posts over here at The Slog.
Having faced my imminent mortality for upwards of 5 days, I was in a "deep" mood. Well, as deep as I'm usually capable of being (Note the Clash reference took almost 7 USA-Today-length paragraphs to appear).
I did and do mean what I said here. For what it's worth.
Well, I've done a lot of soul-searching...
...over the past few days. Kind of hard not to when you're faced with your own mortality (see "Well, I DON'T have cancer"). And I've come to some conclusions.
I'm not one of those naive jackasses who claims that "This changes EVERYTHING." Nobody really changes for more than a few weeks after a scare like that. The only real change that I truly plan to never have another cigarette, no matter how plastered I get. Funny how a lung cancer scare makes you read the warnings a little more seriously [The irony: that was a non-cigarette-related cancer, as far as I know].
But, for the time being, I've realized that my life is far to short to get embroiled in pettiness and crappy argumentative behavior. So, I'm offering a combination blanket apology and general amnesty to everyone I have ever hurt or been hurt by before Wednesday, November 22nd, 2006. Life is WAAAAAY too short to get caught up on bullshit like that.
However, in keeping with my general policy of cynicism and impatience, I'm also not going to put up with any more crap from those I have already apologized to on numerous occasions or those that have no desire to apologize or atone for their past actions (believe it or not, I'm really not singling anyone out, this is just a general statement - so don't nobody come whining to old Jon that I'm picking on them, I'm not) [I wasn't. No really. Stop looking at me like that]. Life is also WAAAAAY too short to either feel guilty or waste my time with people that don't care enough either way to repair lines of communication that are broken.
I've also decided that I'm not going to ever tell anyone that I've got a potentially fatal condition until I'm sure. I didn't exactly go blabbing all over creation about this, but in the limited pool of folks that I went out of my way to tell (and I know that they told a few others, so those people don't count), only ONE person [Hi, Ali!] didn't either discount my fears to the point that I felt stupid or treat me with such kid gloves and worry that I ended up feeling guilty for bothering them.
And I've decided that when I go to the doctor for persistent pain and they tell me I might have a life-threatening illness, I'm still going to demand a prescription for the original pain. All that emotional and financial stress, and I still have no pills/salve/PT to relieve the cold fire in my shoulder blade, which is as bad as it ever was. Jeez, doc, hook a Cracka' up [If anyone out there is a doctor, I could still use some pills. I'm not in pain, but hey, couldn't hurt...].
The final decision I've made is that I seriously need to listen to the Clash more. 17 hours a day is clearly insufficient.Um...peace out, y'all...I guess...
There's a lot of subtext in this one. But not as much as some folks probably thought.
Next on The Archive: Don't Cry For Me, Turkmenistan.
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