Creative Work Hour and DreemPort February Challenge: Final Freedom!
DreemPort And Creative Work Hour February Challenge
This is PART THREE Of The February Creative Work Hour and DreemPort Challenge. The Final Part. The Conclusion. Fini.
Part One ASKED us a few Questions about Process!
Part Two Asked us to discuss how our Collaboration has Impacted my working relationship with Creative Work Hour.
This FINAL Part (This Post!) is asking us to give us a very thoughtful, and different post than we normally do. Not a typical weekly or daily post. The point of this entire collaboration is to spend some time, DIVING DEEP on one topic. Talk about the process. Talk about Getting There. AND THEN.... POST about that one single Deep Dive! For ME, I do gardening posts. Food Posts. Occasionally, some Photography Posts. What Little I post about rarely takes a magnifying glass and turns itself onto me, personally. In my professional career, I literally work backstage. I am EXCITED to make an EVENT or SHOW happen. I am not onstage. I am NOT in the bright lights. I am happy, feeling the hair on the back of my neck stand, when I hear the applause. I know these things:
• The Audience LOVED IT. Not just the content, but the SHOW. Sure, the performer (or performers) were amazing artists, BUT, the ENTIRE show makes it happen.
• It takes a village! Great Shows do NOT happen in a vacuum. Good Music happens with good sound. Great Performances happen in GREAT LIGHT. Crystal Clear video brings it all closer to the Viewer! All of it comes together. AND I KNOW, I caused that.
• Put an amazing performer onstage, take away the instruments, the sound, turn off the video, and shut down all the lights. Only the first row or three will know the music. But the performance will be missing. WE, the tech crew? We make the show complete. We're not why people come. But we ARE why people go away HAPPY.
I guess, when thinking about my life, it has changed. 15 plus years ago, I was out, skating and playing a game of Hockey. Rather mundane, nothing that hadn't happened a hundred other days. I was skating BACK on defense, and the league's best player was coming on attack, heading to skate around me and score.
I turned, spun and managed to not remember much of what happened after. I spun like a top... like those Olympic skaters, doing some kind of Salchow, Triple Whatever's...!!!
A little later, I was watching a football game on my couch, I stood up, and life as I knew it, ended. Changed. Me, changed, forever.
What happened next, is only from people later telling me.
I stood up, screamed, doubled over and crashed to the ground. I lay screaming... my youngest, screamed for her mom, my wife. They called EMERGENCY Services, and soon enough I was in an ambulance, on my way.
I woke, three weeks later.
THAT hockey game, getting BEAT by that young kid, for him to score, saved my life, and destroyed my life.
I had a happy life. I was content. Nothing fancy. Nothing special. Married. house. Two kids. Job. Content. I thought life was, if not exciting, at least, happy.
I would come to find out, the opposite of love is not hate, but, Indifference. The opposite of Content is not Sadness, but Indifference. Ask anyone who knows me well, and they will tell you, I am a passionate person. I need intimacy. No, not Sex... (tho, I am certainly NOT opposed!) I need intimacy. I crave touch. I need to feel someone holding my hand. I need to have hugs. I need to walk into my kitchen, and be cooking, and feel someone put their hand on me, as they walk by. Little touches. Little glances. Little things add up to intimacy. Sharing something that no one else does. I need it. I crave it.
THAT all went away. In the blink of an eye. On the Ice that early Sunday morning. Decade and a half ago. Gone in Moments.
I woke, in the hospital, groggy. Fuzzy from medication. Barely aware. I felt cold. That came first. I could hear all kinds of noises. I saw people near me. Some I thought I knew wearing white. I heard voices, sort of. But, not really. I was wired to everything, and everything kind of felt numb.
Each day, brought more awareness. AFTER waking that first day for me (and three weeks for my family) I became more aware. YET< still couldn't speak. I had a tube in my throat. I had 13 IV bags in me. Feet. Hands. Wrists. One in my neck. I have a photo, my dad took, of me, surrounded by all these lines in me. I had machines. Wiring me to the world. In some abstract way, it was cool. Like Master control. Like Air Traffic Control. A nuclear Reactor Control Room.
Know how you know things are good when you are in hospital? The nurse barely come sin and checks on you. once every few hours. She has 8 patients that day. and helps with someone else's 8. Know how you know things are bad? You have a nurse that splits her entire 10 hour shift between you and one other patient. She has an assistant that helps with 4 total. AND a supervising nurse. You see more doctors than a medical convention. No... being ignored in a hospital is not the worst thing. BEING the CENTER of attention is. It means, they're paying attention because there's DAMN good reason. AND THAT SCARES anyone!
That morning, on ice... I spun, and tore my colon. I tore my colon because, years ago, some tiny high energy particle, traveling tens of thousands of miles per hour, originating from light years away, flew thru everywhere in this massive universe, and somehow, managed to find little ole' me, striking a gene inside a cell, and flipping the cells just the right way, to turn on massive growth. Now, at the cellular level, massive growth is nothing... until it is. That strike, changed my life. It literally flipped a switch, turning on a Cancer Gene. It turned my happy world upside down.
My life as I knew it, ended. and began again.
If that hockey game, where this young kid came by me, hadn't made me spin, I wouldn't ever have found out, I have cancer, until too late. Tearing my insides, sorta, until i stood, saved my life. Standing up from my couch, saved my life.
TRUST ME, it sure as hell didn't feel like it!
I all those hadn't happened, and one or two more? no Me. No Steemit. No Hive for me. My ambulance crew and my family had thought, "oh, it's probably a kidney stone." So they bundled me off to a hospital in the city.
AND then, a car accident, slowed them and made them divert to a closer Emergency Room at a different hospital. Lesser reputation? Maybe. Certainly not as big. or well known. But it was the teaching Hospital for a little place called Harvard University Medical School. AND the doctor on duty that day, had spent some time, in Southeast Asia, as a medical doc, working for BUDS, and the Brown Water Navy, during the Vietnam War. He saw so many similar bodies, in similar pain. AND recognized my symptoms. Without looking like it, I was exhibiting what he thought was massive trauma to my abdomen. I was behaving as if I was gut shot.
He did the logical thing
...and sliced me, from my ribs to just above little Bluefy rolled me on my side, and stuck a hose into my gut, and flooded my interior with water. Cleaned me out. and found I had exploded inside. A combat Surgeon, and a Kid (who neat me) playing hockey, somehow managed to save me. I still have the scar along my whole front.
THREE WEEKS were over in a blink for me, because I was unaware.
I was in la la land from the drugs. My family however, was VERY aware. And funny thing... they died inside too. Trauma affects everyone slightly differently. For me, I move towards a fire alarm. I move towards a crisis. I just do. I've been involved in many crises. Tornadoes. Bombs. Gunshots, literally buzzing past my ear. Fires. Whatever. I move towards the problem and tackle it head on. I have taken lots of emergency training and needed some, too, in my career. Integrated Crisis Management. but that trained me for external threats and problems.
THAT day? I died and lived
That day changed me. I managed thru the treatments. Almost a year. Chemotherapy for weeks. I pee'd little bits of platinum for almost a year..Platinum is part of the delivery system. I never could reach into the toilet and get it, no matter how valuable Platinum is!!! I had 36 days of radiation, and have three tiny little "X Marks the spot" target tattoo's, to remind me. That radiation, by the way? Immediately moved me so far down the list of people eligible for astronaut, that I remember when that realization hit me. Absurd, since, I was almost too old. No pilot training, and no mission specialist training. But every little boy and girl growing up wanting to be an astronaut never really forgets that dreem. Another little bit of me died.
THAT day, being diagnosed... hearing the treatment plan?
I didn't see it at the time, but at each one of these steps, something was happening to me. Each little death, meant another part of me died. And funny thing, I found something. I found it within the dead me. I found it fairly fast, too, from what I hear of other cancer and trauma survivors.
IT IS WHAT IT IS
Life is as simple as that. No point in dwelling on the past. I cannot change it. No point in hoping for something in the future. We are simply NOT promised anything. So, we never know WHEN OUT TIME IS UP. Make it count. EACH and Every day. MAKE IT COUNT.
Complacency
Complacency is the worst. Indifference is the worst. STOP feeling that morose, inactivity. DO SOMETHING. Move forward. PROGRESS is important AND, may very well be THE MOST IMPORTANT part of your life. not inactivity. Not complacency.
MY FREEDOM
My Freedom is this: Make it count. LIVE life to it's fullest. Stop waiting for something to change. Be that change. Want something? Work for it. AND, stop hoping for something to change, or happen. If it won't happen, or you know it shouldn't or is wrong? Stop pushing for that wrongness. Stop hoping for that elusive. Make your life mean something.
The people around you, will either come along with you or fall by the wayside. You cannot live your life, waiting on someone else. Live your life.
And that makes me smile...
The large Nordhavn image and the smaller one, with me aboard? That's what matters to me. FINDING a way to move forward. Making progress. My Freedom is represented by that boat. Either boat. Living Aboard. Finding My Own Way. Living Life. Exploring. Seeing. Doing. Until the REAL END.
#dreemport #cwh #creativeworkhour #dreemer #februarysucks #februarychallenge
your own health and your own lives.
The GroVid23 Challenge:
Grow Your OWN is not just a simple short challenge,
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BluefinStudios
I had mixed feelings connecting with this, one point I'm sad and then goes your words comforting me.
You've been through so much and it's totally beautiful how you managed to come out this strong, it's motivating and encouraging really. I could imagine how hard it was before now sharing this but you totally poured yourself out and I'm awed that the Blue I've always known to be passionate has gone through this much.
You are definitely strong and you do need that intimacy and I do hope you find it as much as possible. Moving on from here, I pray you grow even stronger and better ❤️🤗.
thank you for the kind, compassionate encouragement, @hopestylist
Thank you more for sharing ❤️
I knew most of this of course, but nice to see you being vulnerable and open and getting that freedom. freedom is so important and we don't realize how much we lock ourselves into our personal prisons by refusing to let it just flow....
love the last lessons...
"get busy living or get busy dying" ...I hope this never leaves you, Greg. Your joy and happiness is so firmly inside your own grasp. Freedom is too sweet a blessing to live without.
wonderful post... much better than the other option 🤗
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What a testimony!! To me, this is nothing short of a miracle!
I love how you describe your freedom and how you share it in a way that we can all apply it to our own lives.
Thank you for opening up and sharing this with us!
thank you. Sharing deeply personal things is a difficult thing for me. I am trying to break out of some of my old habits.
You're welcome. Sometimes it can be difficult to break old habits if they have been coming for a long time. But if it will be to your benefit to break those habits, it might be worth your while to either build up the courage or commit to breaking the habit, depending on what it is of course.
I'm glad to hear that you are living life to the full! Not many people can say that! If breaking those habits can give you more freedom, I would say "Go for it!"
!PIZZA
$PIZZA slices delivered:
@pixresteemer(3/5) tipped @bluefinstudios