Thinking about death led me fairly directly to thinking about living: “What am I going to do with the rest of my life?” is always a good question, but it does come up with a certain vivacity in the afterglow of a cancer diagnosis. My immediate and overriding objective in life, of course, is getting well. But what of the big picture? I don’t feel like defining my existence strictly by my particular medical adventures (and thanks to P+T for “adventure, not predicament.”) Although I am committed to full participation in getting well, as long as I have time and strength for other pursuits, I’m going to pursue them. But first, I needed to rethink my life’s course. I had used about half the fifteen minutes I had left until my friend arrived (remember — my thoughts of life and death took place in my hotel room beween the moment I read the pathology report in email and the arrival of my friend for what had been planned as a night of cuisine and conversation in Paris.)
As evidence that I’ve been thinking for some time about Kierkegaard’s prescription that “life is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be experienced,” I doodled the image below at age 17 in 1964, during Professor Deegan’s religion course at Reed. He had Hodgkin’s disease and prohibited smoking in class, which irritated me at the time:
First thought: “I only want to do what I want to do from now on.” Second thought: “It’s not such a radical shift from what you’ve been doing for some time.”
My father was not happy in his work, and when I decided at sixteen to become a writer, I can recall now, nearly 50 years later, that I reasoned that whether I succeeded or failed, for at least part of the time, I would be using my hours and days to do something I truly want to be doing. This reasoning is fresh in my mind because when the market crashed and my IRA went south and I realized that I would never retire, the first thought that came to me was: “It’s a good thing I chose something to do for a living that I will enjoy doing for the rest of my life.”
About ten years ago, I told Judy that I probably ought to formulate a retirement strategy, she said: “How will you know when you’ve retired?” I recognize her point that I would continue writing, teaching, hanging out online, puttering in the garden, painting and sculpting, travelling — to some degree — if I could afford to do anything I want. In brief — I’m happy with what I’ve done, both from my contribution to others and to what I’ve taken from it. I made more than a few bad decisions. I could have been a better person. But for the most part, I’m OK with who I am and how I got to now.
I recognized right away that the business about doing only what I want to do is not entirely pure. Especially the travelling part. I’ve seen a good part of the world. I had to have a supplement added to my last passport because I had filled it with stamps from Sao Paolo and Helsinki, Paris and Amsterdam, Singapore and Mantova, Kyoto and Bloomington, Chapel Hill and Leicester. I love so many places and cherish so many friends and colleagues in those places. But the airplanes and hotel rooms aren’t so fun anymore. In the future, I’m going to have to limit my travel to some degree, because I’m getting sick of the hassles.
I am doing three kinds of things now .I get on planes and give keynote speeches. That’s mostly how I pay my bills. I teach at Stanford and Berkeley and the California Institute of Integral Studies. I’m working on a multifaceted project about 21st century literacies that involves teaching tools, videos, and, eventually, a book. I’m doing this book on my own because even before I knew I had cancer I knew I didn’t want to wait for publishers to finally get what I’m talking about (I wrote about virtual communities in 1987, but it took until 1992 to convince a publisher that anybody but engineers would ever be interested in using computers to communicate). I applied for a Guggenheim grant. I gave notice to UC Berkeley that I’m taking leave this Spring semester to work on my book. I’m open to an angel investor. But I’m already being my own angel investor. I’m going to continue this project as far as I am able to do so. The subject is important. It’s part of what I uniquely have to contribute to the world. It isn’t going to cure a disease or cause world peace to break out, but I do believe that the instruments I am building for spreading know-how about the best use of digital media could enable others to do good things.
As I told my digital journalism students, it took me zero seconds to realize that I’m going to continue teaching them as long as I’m able, because I know that equipping the people who are going to reinvent journalism is an important thing to do. And because trying to teach and learn excellently is the most difficult and rewarding work I’ve ever done.
Come Spring, I hope to have recovered from the treatment cycle that I am now beginning. Time to plant the garden and work on the book. For the past couple decades, I’ve been blessed to sit barefoot under my plum tree, my mind wired directly to the world through my laptop. I yearn to return to that blessed place for another Spring, another Summer, if such is granted to me. Until then, I’m working with my students until the end of the quarter — which corresponds with the end of my treatment cycle.
