All the Best...and All the Worst.

In October of 2012, I heard a snippet of a comedy set from comedienne Tig Notaro. They used an excerpt from a show she did in LA on This American Life (one of my favorite things ever). I love so much of the material they use for This American Life, but I've never purchased anything extra - no books, no dvds, etc. I haven't even seen Mike Birbiglia's movie (ha!). This set though, called Tig Notaro - Live!, I went home and purchased immediately.

Tig was diagnosed with breast cancer and just hours after finding out, she went onstage and did a live comedy set. I can't imagine why I was so drawn to it, but since last October, I've listened to it over and over again. I am a person who LOVES to feel feelings. The intersection of comedy and grief in this recording was so poignant - I never got tired of it.

I have listened to Live! a couple of times in the last few months. What struck me the hardest this time around is a section where Tig says that - as she gets diagnosed - she is experiencing all of the best and all of the worst times in her life. I hate to say it, but I feel like I'm in the same boat. Luckily, I don't have as much on my plate as she did, but it still feels overwhelming.

It's hard to handle the "good stress" in my life. Stress that I would have happily - even giddily - embraced a year ago. Applying for jobs, interviewing, planning the course of my career...

Making decisions about my life, my work, long-term goals, and all these other little choices is just hard. I just started working full-time, I just finished my master's degree, and we just moved into a great new area. There's so much to do and so much to experience. 

My personal issue now is the difficulty in negotiating how much having cancer should factor into making decisions. Should I just plow through, pretending like it never happened? What if that isn't good for me? What if I don't ever reach any of the goals I want to reach? I don't know if I should be okay with that. So...if I seem in a haze lately - that's why... I don't want to be to hard on myself, but I see no benefit in coddling myself either.

Decisions, decisions...

**Someone fun that I know suggested that I use Bitstrips to spice up the visuals of this blog, since I was wary of putting a bunch of actual pics of myself. I think I love it.**