But why though?

This space won't usually be so serious or so personal. I don't think. But I wanted to get this out now.

One of the most influential books ever published in England, Foxe's Book of Martyrs, begins with "A Declaration Concerning The Utilitie And Profite Of Thys History." There were so many books in the world in 1563 that bringing another one into existence required the author to provide some justification. Foxe would presumably be horrified at the present overcrowded and under-read state of the blogosphere. (He would also be horrified at the continued existence of Catholics; I am certainly not advocating Foxe as a model for anything). But I do want to talk a bit about what compelled this blog into existence.

Most Americans who make New Years resolutions typically make them between December 26-January 2 [citation needed]. There's an obvious logic here: it's the end of the Gregorian calendar year, which is a logical beginning. There are other dates that make sense too: Rosh Hashanah, the Lunar New Year, etc.

I have wanted to start a blog for a while. I want to talk about current events in the environmental and history/STS discourse, respond to things I've read, and keep an update on my life.

So why am I doing this now?

Although there is not, to my knowledge, a traditional calendar that starts January 20th,  it feels like a new year to me. The past two years have felt like twenty years, and a few other dates have unexpectedly asserted their precedence in my mental calendar.

August 3, 2017: the date I am diagnosed with testicular cancer. My first surgery happens the following day. At some point during this 24-hour period Camille and I find time to call our parents.

August 9, 2017: the date imaging reveals the cancer to be Stage IIB, meaning it has become metastatic and spread through the lymphatic system but not - as far as we knew - to other organs. (In a quirk characteristic of the contingent history of medical diagnosis, whether a patient has Stage IIA and IIB can be dependent on whether the patient is examined by a pathologist or radiologist. The stages are distinguished by the size of the largest lymph node - IIA is under 2cm, IIB is larger. For a radiologist, only the horizontal cross-section of the lymph-node is measured, because CT scans used to only provide horizontal cross-sections with requisite precision; although vertical imaging exists, the data collected to determine staging still applies only to horizontal cross sections. For a pathologist, looking at a lymph node on a dissection table, any direction will do just fine. So I could have been IIA or IIB, depending on whether the lymph node in question was still inside me or not.)

We move apartments. I begin chemotherapy the next week, and am immediately hospitalized with a neutropenic fever.
Everything from here through approximately the following April is still a blur of chemo-brain. Nausea, needle-sticks, bloating, memory loss, fatigue. Sometimes I have the strength to half-read a graphic novel or watch The Good Place. Some memories of this time still exist, in some cases, but most have been blocked so that I can return to what I sometimes call "real life." Which of course raises the question: if this is real life, what the hell was that?

November 24, 2017: the day after Thanksgiving, and the last time I have to come into Memorial Sloan Kettering for chemotherapy. I would still be hospitalized twice more.

Camille and I are given the all-clear to travel to her parents' house in Maui for the winter, where I spend two weeks with horses and sunshine. I think I see light at the end of the tunnel.

January 12, 2018: My second surgery, a retroperitoneal lymph node dissection. I am visited (in person and remotely) by the best support system of family and friends I could possibly ask for.

January 19th, 2018: My first day home from the hospital. It is rare for oncologists to say a patient is cancer-free, but I am told I have no evidence of disease. I am incredibly lucky to have had a cancer that is curable, or nearly so - there is a 96% five-year survival rate for the stage that I had. I still come in for regular checkups with blood-work and x-rays, and still live with residual uncertainty and occasional flashbacks to what I realized I think of as the Underworld.

Anniversaries of these dates, in the single year since they happened, are typically less like new years celebrations and more like Frodo's cyclical illnesses years after after getting stabbed by the Ringwraith. They bring me temporarily back into a world I have mostly left behind. It is an uncanny feeling but perhaps a useful one. There is a calendar of Big Life Events lurking beneath the quotidian calendar of our normal lives, and getting periodically reminded of that is a good way of not stressing so much about upcoming conference deadlines or general exam reading.

So: why a blog? 

For one, I want to have a place where I can record my thoughts before they leave me. During my sickness, time began to feel increasingly non-linear. Certain days lasted forever, other weeks and months vanished down the memory-hole forever. I found paragraphs in my novel's Google Doc that I swear I never wrote. I keep a journal, but it it is sometimes difficult to find the energy to record things for myself. In some ways it's similar to cooking - making a meal for friends and loved ones gives me energy and inspiration. Left alone, I am liable to eat boxed macaroni and cheese every night for a week. (Annie's, if you are in the market to sponsor blogs with zero current readership, I'm here for you.)

Cancer also drove home the difference between statistical likelihood and individual contingency. I had a minute chance of developing cancer in the first place, but it happened. I had a 5-15% chance of developing a neutropenic fever, but that happened. We plan our lives as if we know what will happen next, based on statistical likelihoods. I probably won't get hit by a bus tomorrow, but I might. I probably won't get cancer again, but I might. Waiting to do anything increases the likelihood it will never happen. So I have decided to stop waiting. As Dan Poynter said, "if you wait to write, you're not a writer, you're a waiter." He also wrote over 130 books, which is honestly too many, so ... also not exactly goals.

I am also learning more about academia, which I love possibly more than most academics, but also has very real institutional flaws (this may be a theme of future posts). One of them is that the publishing schedule is slow and complicated, and even a published article will not reach that many people due to access barriers like paywalls. Also, many (most, tbh) of my thoughts don't deserve a published article, but in my infinite vanity I want them to go somewhere, and they are often too obscure for a Facebook post and too long for a tweet.

Hence, this hellish medium, the blog.

Welcome, friends. I am so sorry.

<3