This week (October 22nd) marks the ninth week of my treatment.  I’m beginning to sound like a broken record, but there’s nothing new to report on the health front.  (Other than I need to stop eating so much junk food!)  I’m feeling pretty good and adjusting to my new job (see Working Man below), which is taking some getting used to – both mentally and physically.

– – –

This week also is the second week of my return to the working world.  I wasn’t out of work for very long compared to many, many other people.  Still, there is something ingrained in my psyche about being employed.  Maybe it’s a man thing, maybe it’s a generational thing…but I think most people want to have a purpose in their lives, even if it’s an 8 to 5 job that pays the bills and keeps food on the table.  It’s funny for me, because that’s exactly why I got out of the proverbial corporate world and went into teaching.  I wanted to do something with a true purpose…make a difference in young lives.  All of those cliches that are  attached to teaching, but, as I found out the hard way, are very difficult to quantify on a daily basis.

I returned to the world of work with rather ironic timing.  I found out about my new position two days before my October 9th CT scan.  Needless to say, I was both excited and scared that one piece of good news would be ruined by the other circumstance (cancer) dominating my life.  When I got the great news about my scan, it was as if prayers on both fronts had been answered simultaneously.  If that doesn’t reinforce the necessity of belief, I don’t know what does.

I’m not sure the utter seriousness of my situation this past summer ever really sank in with me.  I don’t know if it was denial, naivete’, or plain craziness that prevented me from completely going off the deep-end regarding my world as it appeared to spin out-of-control.  It may make more sense to many of you now, knowing that I was also out of a job, why I considered my circumstances to be a difficult journey, not just a fight.  It was the only way to keep my own sanity.

And now I’m a working man….It has been quite a change to go from the classroom back to the business world.  Strangely enough, though, the transition has not been as difficult as I first imagined.  Perhaps that was my negative side filling my head with doom-and-gloom.  Perhaps it was my psyche still battered and bruised from ten years of teaching.  Either way, it’s good to have a purpose, even if the true measure of purpose is being there for those who truly matter – my family.  That’s what really matters, and, I believe that is why this go ’round with the corporate world will be different, very different.  This time, I don’t have to prove anything – to myself or to anyone else.  If I work from 8 to 5, then I’ve done my duty,  I’ve given my time and effort, and – truly – that’s all that should matter.

So, to borrow a couple of lines from Geddy Lee of Rush….I guess that’s what I am, a working man.