It's Time

I recently conducted a Google search that made my stomach tense up. I typed in the first and last name of a woman I know and after her name, I typed "Obituary." Then I held my breath. 

The woman probably doesn't know who I am. She's also very sick, like, already-lived-past-most-predictions sick. She writes a blog and I hadn't seen a post in a while so I feared the worst. While I'm guessing she is deep in a terrible struggle with cancer, my search indicated that she still graces this Earth with her physical presence. 

This got me wondering if anyone who followed my blog years ago and who doesn't know me personally has ever Googled, "Tara Shuman Obituary." (I'm tempted to Google it now, to see if any other Tara Shumans have gone before me but that just feels creepy.) 

So, here I am, still alive, and still writing. And I have a lot to say. 

My school year ended when I submitted the last of my work on June 25th. Soon after, Annabel and I snuck away to Universal Studios in Orlando with my best friend and her family. We had a blast, and I returned with lifelong memories, and, sadly, COVID. Annabel continues to prove that she's immune to this virus but I'm clearly not, and so I wait out my 2022 bout with COVID in much of the same way I waited out the 2021 version -- too tired to accomplish much, but too energetic to rest. Thank you Moderna and Pfizer for the fact that isolation, a headache, and a runny nose are my biggest personal struggles with this virus. 

This year, I really didn't feel like celebrating the U.S. of A., so COVID was perfectly timed for me. The fall of Roe, unrelenting gun violence, and the fact that white supremacists feel empowered to cover their faces and march along the Freedom Trail made me want to skip July 4th altogether. I'll get back to it next year, perhaps when I have more hope in my heart. 

Now, it's July 5th, and those who don't work in schools are back to work. So back to work I go. 

Only, for the first time in my adult life, I don't have an official job. Well, I guess I do have a job, but my school isn't expecting me back until August 2023. Because for the next year, I will be taking one year away from teaching to write. Write what? you may ask. A novel, first and foremost. And essays. And short stories. And maybe a few poems. My mind is so full of ideas that I can barely categorize them all. That's where this post comes in. 

For the next year, I am going to share the journey of following my dream to be a writer. My mom may be the only one who follows that journey, and for that, I am eternally grateful (Hi Mom!). So, if for no one else but Mom and me, I commit to document the failed, mundane, and maybe even successful efforts of an ordinary person pursuing a dream. I am terrified and yet, I have never felt more alive. I'd guess most people who go after a dream feel that way. 

Before I sign off, I want to be transparent about a decision I have made regarding the URL tarabeatscancer.com: I have decided to let it go and to move my blog to hopeisagoodbreakfast.com. Likely nobody but me would notice or care, but I happen to really care. This blog is my baby, my starting point, my lifeline. I always wondered if my death would be the end of tarabeatscancer.com but low and behold, it isn't. 

So why the change? Since I was able to face the reality that cancer is, for many of us, a deadly beast, the language of "beating cancer" has never sat well with me. The language implies that, had cancer killed me, I would have "lost" to something stronger than me. It also implies that I did something to beat it. But I didn't. I just had lots of privilege (which meant, in part, great medical care) and I got lucky. Really lucky. 

I explain "Hope is a good breakfast" in my memoir titled such. Yet now, I see those words as even more relevant. Because my chance at more life (almost 10 years of it since I was diagnosed) is proof that hope is extremely important, perhaps even central to survival. But there is a lot more to do than just hope. For example, now, it's time...

Time to go after that dream.