You can’t always get what you want

I feel like I’m always playing “beat the clock”… even since before my personal run in with cancer in 2006/2007. While that experience altered my world view in terms of living a better life and getting a second chance years before I was diagnosed, my grandmother on my mother’s side was diagnosed in 1988 with what was probably stage 4 pancreatic cancer (it moved so fast and took her life so quickly it couldn’t have been anything less than stage 4)…she died at age 60.

My mother got cancer after I did. And after her sister and countless others of her family members did. She ignored the signs and when she was finally diagnosed in 2009 she to was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. As we all know there is no stage 5.

She died 18 months later at the age of 62.

Now my Father, who has never had cancer but gets regular check ups like I do now is pushing 70. He has heart disease issues (on his side of the family), blood pressure, cholesterol and diabetes etc. These are the things I’m dealing with now too. But unlike my mother and grandmother I dealt with my cancer symptoms quick enough to survive my diagnosis. It will be 10 years since I was diagnosed this december.

There is an old adage that says “One disease, long life. No disease, short life” meaning having caught my cancer and having been monitored pretty regularly for the last 10 years the likely hood that if anything shows up after a check up that will adversely affect my health it will be dealt with swiftly.

But regardless of this fact…I live with the constant concern that I will not live past 60. My grandmother set the bench mark for me… and 60 is just 13 years away for me now. That is really fucking close.

So my feeling of playing “beat the clock” is a result of this hard wired superstition that most of my grandmother’s family died young, many for other reasons than genetic predisposition. They smoked and drank and did God knows what in the 40’s and 50’s growing up. Who knew then what cigarettes would do to you back then… They smoked on broadcast TV during the nightly news for pete’s sake.

Anyway, this anxiety that I will not see a day past 60 drives me to distraction sometimes when I think about the goal I set out to achieve in my youth. My dream of selling cartoons and being a syndicated cartoonist etc etc.

I’ve lamented about this too often here and I’m sure you’re bored of hearing about it. A wanna-be complaining about being a wanna-be. But here is the rub…cartooning, writing etc is a sedentary lifestyle pursuit. You sit A LOT making your art.

Sitting will kill you. It’s basically killing me. My weight has steadily gone up in recent years. I sit in my car commuting to my dead end soul crushing job an hour away, to sit most of the day writing up customer’s repair orders for their cars. Then after 10 hours of mostly sitting, I hop back into my car and drive the hour ride home to sit and eat and then maybe, sit and write/draw as my day comes to a close. I shower and go to bed and wake up to do it all over again the next day.

My life’s pursuit requires me to sit after sitting all day. That is catching up with me.

Certainly I can walk, run or make time to exercise but that then means less time to create. Hence my title for this piece. “you cant always get what you want”

Is life cruel?

Are my priorities screwed up?

Am I belly aching too much?

Probably.

Yes I think I am. I need to get over myself.

And I need to put my biological need to create on the back burner and concentrate on moving more, being active more and losing at least 50 pounds to extend my life a little longer, get off the meds that I’m on and maybe relax a little about living past 60.

My art will always be there. My need to create will always be there. My time on this earth will be as long as it will be and I need to relax about that.

In the meantime I need to enjoy living and stop working so hard to make art most people never see.

More living, more moving, more being healthy…less sitting, less getting old and less dying too young. (especially since that’s all in my head, right?)