Life can change in an instant

You know the expression, "Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans?" Of course you do. It's a quaint expression, but it's true.

A month ago today, I had a mild heart attack. I experienced chest pain in the morning at work, and I ended up in the emergency room. A week later, I underwent a triple bypass, and five days after that, I came home to my wife and pups.

I'm so fucking happy to be here. Had I not gone to the ER, I probably wouldn't be.

It's not shocking to me that people, mostly men, ignore chest pain. When it happened to me, I was terrified, confused, and wanted more than anything for it to be indigestion or an anxiety attack. I was convinced it was right up until I got the results from my catheterization

Three arteries, two completely blocked, one ninety percent.

And I'd thought I felt fine right up until the chest pain. I even felt fine after.

But those five minutes of pain and discomfort changed my life. Saved my life, even.

So here I am, a month removed from the pain. I'm mending well. Nothing is perfect, but I feel better every day, and for the most part things are going according to the recovery plan. I'm able to walk for thirty minutes straight now, albeit at a slow pace, and I should be starting cardiac rehabilitation soon. I'm eating well and have lost twenty-two pounds since I left the hospital three and a half weeks ago. I would like to lose another thirty, but slow and steady wins the race.

I even got to enjoy a couple of glasses of wine this week. Nothing has ever tasted so good!

And I'm getting bored, which I take as a good sign. I was never bored in the hospital or for the first ten days I was home. Scared? Yes. Worried? Yes. Overwhelmed? Fuck yes! 

I don't think you can be bored when you are in survival mode. I never was. I don't think I had the capacity for it.

How can you be bored when every little thing your body does is a question you need to ask the doctor about? Why is my chest creaking? Oh, that's normal? What about my blood pressure spikes? Also normal? And the bleeding from my chest tube wound that went on for two solid weeks? Normal? Oh, right, drainage.

I wish they had a list of all the things that could and would probably occur after open heart surgery that were normal. It would have saved me a lot of anxiety.

But yeah, I'm bored.

I'm still healing, and I have a long way to go. I have to take it slow. I have to get back in some kind of shape, and then surpass that and get in the best shape of my life. I want to take this moment and use it to make sure I get the most out of the rest of my life. I'm fifty years old, and if I can get another fifty years, I'll take every moment of it!

The funny thing about all this is the clarity. I always thought I was afraid of dying. I guess we all are. It's part of being human, right? We grow up and develop the knowledge through observation and experience that life is finite, that we will all die. It's the one thing we all have in common.

But I never appreciated life as much s I do right now.

How sad is that?

Fear of death as a vague future occurrence is one thing, and that's scary enough. Now that I've been through all this, fear of death has gained a reality that I've never before experienced. 

I never knew what I feared before. Now I know.

It's not death that's scary and upsetting.

It's no longer living.

It's the realization that someday I'll stop spending time with my family and friends, stop snuggling my pups, stop reading and writing and speaking. Stop playing video games and eating and drinking and laughing and loving and smiling and crying and trying. Just stop.

It's not the dark specter of death that I'm afraid of anymore.

It's the loss of this beautiful, precious, amazing life.

I always liked the song, "Live Like You Were Dying," by Tim McGraw.

Now I really understand it.

 I don't know how much time I have, but I know I'm above ground and more or less upright, breathing, smiling, and somewhat terrified.  I know I love my family and friends and want to have as many moments with them as I can. I know I want to be healthy and make the best of every single day.

And, as always, I know I'm a writer.

Write, fool. Live, love, eat, drink, smile, weep.

Write,

How to Live the Life of Your Dreams, Prologue

Commitment is difficult.

The act of doing something day after day is valuable. It is how we make progress towards anything. 

Why, then, is it so hard to get started? To keep going?

I know as well as you do that its all about habit.

Our lives are the product of our habits. Who we are, how we view ourselves, and how others perceive us are all based on our habits. We are the direct outcome of the things we do (or don't do) every day. Therefore, if we are unhappy with ourselves and our lives, we are really unhappy with the result of our habits.

But habits, as the word hints at, are hard to change. And new habits can be incredibly difficult to create.

So how do we go from a life and self-image that we don't like, perhaps ever abhor, to one that we love?

There are a million answers on the internet. Many of them will offer you a quick solution. If you just wake up at a certain time, drink this tea first thing, and workout until you have no time for anything else, in 90 days you'll have the life of your dreams.

Yeah, right.

If the life of your dreams is working out and drinking tea, I guess that might work. But if you have any other aspirations, you might want to try a different path. Not that working out, drinking tea, and getting up early are bad for you by any stretch, but they are not in and of themselves a way to the life of your dreams. They are small parts of a bigger picture that might help you. Or they might not. It depends on your goals.

Your dream life is different than mine. It has to be, because we are different people. While many people may share similar dreams, in that one aspect of their dream may be the same, their dream life cannot be the same. We as individuals are too different and varied to allow such uniformity in a thing as broad and all-encompassing as a dream life. There can be no uniformity when confronted with such infinite variety, except by happenstance, or through rigid compliance to a set of values defined by someone else.

We give up enough of our time to values assigned by others, in the form of a job or career whose primary purpose is a paycheck that will hopefully leave you enough breathing room to pursue the rest of your dreams in your remaining time.

Now, maybe you are further along the path than I am, and you have a job or career that aligns with your dreams. That's fantastic. Seriously, no sarcasm intended. But even then, you have found your way to that place by figuring out what habits and actions will get you there, and by avoiding the one's that won't, particularly those that take you away from that place.

I have a long way to go. 

The good news is I have a pretty good idea of where I'm going. I want to be a fiction writer, poet, great husband, great friend, and healthy enough to enjoy it.

Everything else is meaningless. 

But I spend a lot of time on everything else. I have habits that are not aligned with the vision of where I'm going. And I lack habits that will help me get there.

Well, then get rid of everything that doesn't help you on the path to that vision, and spend more time on everything that does.

Simple, right?

Sure, as simple as starting new habits and stopping old ones.

Over the next month, I'm going to try and change my daily, weekly, and monthly habits. I'm going to eliminate the things that take time and energy away from the life I want. I'm going to cultivate new habits that bring me closer to that vision. And I'm going to blog about the process. I'm going to share my struggles and my successes, in the hope that someone might find this useful.

And when I'm done, I'm going to compile all these blogs as a book and publish it, so if you are into that sort of thing, you'll be able to get all of this as a book, physical or digital, 

Join me tomorrow for chapter one, Clarifying Your Vision.