I’ve led up to it in other ways, but April 1st is the first anniversary date of my brain surgery. It was the day when I laid myself open-brained at the table, and let an Estonian doctor do what he needed to do inside my head.
It’s the day I sang the Spice Girls to my speech therapist while the doctor did his work. While he tried to remove the tumor she kept me busy with the little notes riding around inside my head. I wanted to keep those melodies so badly, that I pushed myself to do that. Normally the type that needs to ask what to do or what to keep, but for some reason, I knew exactly what I needed to happen with retaining my voice. I needed to keep it. While I would beat myself up over the decision after the seizures and hiccups briefly came back, I recognize that I wouldn’t have wanted to do this any other way. I’ve made some great songs since the break that I hope you guys like when I finally put them out there for you to hear very soon.
So April 1st, 2023 is a pretty big day for me. It’s the day I’ve managed to keep writing every day for 10 weeks. It’s the day I’ve managed to force myself to complete tasks to share online with fancier pictures and more interesting pieces of clothing. It’s the day I get to take myself out in the world a bit because I survived a year of having cancer. I did it as healthfully as I could through all of the rough times that came my way. It is one whole year of being a little better every single day.
Writing as a pathway
I’ve been fortunate to be able to turn writing into part of my personal path out of the doldrums of cancer, and into something more new and improved. I didn’t come to it with this idea to write so much as push out something out of myself originally. That's what made me do my first article about ever getting cancer back in May of 2022.
I just felt that need to publish something even if people didn’t understand why or how. That’s the whole important piece of it. Whatever I publish may be hard to keep up with, but it has to matter to me if not anyone else. What happened from there has been this sort of symphony of retention as it were. This daily journaling has ensured a deeper and more open understanding of the world I’m in. It’s amazing how lovely such a simple thing can feel.
Overall though, I like sharing the now classic stories of what I was doing in my teens and twenties. I want to be able to lift every piece of the events of my 30s. I want to share the love and gifts I’ve been able to receive from people during this process. It has been rather fun to be able to share and be more open during this time. I hope you’re able to enjoy some of this stuff as much as I enjoy putting it out.
I have to keep going. I get to poise myself to get some new ideas and bless the internet with them. Doing longer and better articles and maybe shorter and more exciting poetry. I composed a poem this week. I hadn’t written anything like that since high school. Poetry always feels weird to produce when you half-rap over beats you’re given.
Plus there are all the things I added to my life in 2023 that you didn’t get to see. At the beginning of March, I started writing a new song every day. I’d record them in my Apple Voice Memos and see if they inspired me later. No lie, I’m kind of afraid to go back and listen to them again. It’s like I’m going to open them up and it’s going to be me mouthing complete nonsense for 2 to 3 minutes. Never mind… that does sound exciting. Maybe they all sound like Gucci Mane tracks.
I also got a chance to do articles for Tunite Music, and it’s been fun dropping these opportunities across multiple platforms. There are all these little things to do to try and make my work better as I go. It’s rather hard to do all at once, but I’m changing my tune to make it feel worthwhile rather than being completely against me moving forward. It’s always interesting to use the logic of a Chris Wojcik, but outside of him and Kareem Abdul Jabbar (who’s more of a writer at age 70), he’s the only other writer/athlete I know. One of the things Wojcik likes to talk about is how important it is for him that he does both his writing and his Brazilian jiujitsu together. It’s never been easy for him to do, but it’s a big part of what keeps him moving forward at both things at once. That’s the kind of energy I’d like to cultivate as well. The energy of someone who does both the writing and the making of music. The energy of someone that can build others up as easily as they can break them down.
So April 1st is the anniversary date of my cancerous brain surgery. The date when I got a new chance at life because we caught the cancer early enough to possibly beat it. I’ve gone (mostly) vegan, have six more months of chemotherapy to finish, and hopefully I’ll be writing enough to keep the skies moving as I make more music and release more work going forward.
So thank you to everyone that has managed to stick around during this process.
I appreciate all of you so very much.