It’s Time To Bounce With This Pandemic — Not Against It

Almost three years ago, as 2019 toddled into existence, I wrote an essay titled What Keeps Me Living.

I garnered the princely sum of 200 bucks for that effort after it caught the attention of an editor in this space. It’s the only piece of writing for which I’ve ever been paid. Suffice it to say I haven’t quit my day job.

The essay was inspired by gratitude — gratitude for being alive (and arguably useful) twelve years after my world was upended by a shocking cancer diagnosis at the relatively tender age of 39.

It’s now been almost fifteen years since that fateful January day. As per the old Moe Bandy ballad, I’ve managed to stick around “till I’m too old to die young.”

I’ll freely admit that it didn’t seem fair at the time. Married for less than four years, with two-year-old and six-month-old daughters, and after fourteen years of training to earn two professional degrees, it seemed bloody unfair.

But as most of us know full well, such is life.

There’s no such thing as fair. Which just so happens to be the title of this week’s episode of the fourth season of Yellowstone, the series on Netflix which currently has my attention.