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A long time ago I wrote a post on survivor’s guilt.

It’s here if you care to take a look.

No one talks much about PTSD with cancer survivors, I have touched on it here and here.

Today…Today I discovered a new type of survivor’s guilt in myself.

Sometimes I feel like I am wasting the time I have.

There. I said it.

In the past 12 years I have lost both acquaintances and close friends to cancer and I have survived. For that I am grateful beyond measure.

I expected I would lose some of the people I meet within the cancer community.

It is a numbers thing really. Not all of us make it through. While each of those losses is hard to take, losing the ones I expected to grow old with surprise me. A couple of women from my high school class. One friend of the past 24 years who was healthy, strong, clean eating, non-smoking, vegan anti vaccer who died of cancer in March? That one really surprised me. I didn’t think she would get cancer let alone die of it 3 months after diagnosis. I thought she would have a lousy year and (due to the nature of her particular cancer diagnosis) stave it off for awhile. It was in her liver which is a hard place to fight it.

I don’t feel guilty that I lived and I don’t want to feel like I am wasting time. I want to –well, here is a song lyric for you…

From One Republic,

“I, I did it all
I, I did it all
I owned every second that this world could give
I saw so many places, the things that I did
With every broken bone, I swear I lived.”

This song broke me wide open the first time I heard it and I downloaded it instantly. Here is the official music video.

So here I am.

I am working on my book.  I am raising my kids though they are mostly out of the house now, and going to college. We had the brilliant idea to get another dog so at least for a little while I will be really busy with training.

Am I wasting the precious time I have been given? The time I fought for with every fiber of my being?

The answer is a resounding NO!

I am not wasting a minute of it. Some of that time is spent with my family or rearranging my home. And some of it is spent writing.  I am doing the things I find important and that make me feel whole. Growing roses, and fruit, and vegetables and people…

I was moving ahead quite nicely with my writing. I got frustrated my last draft wasn’t my last draft, but I had begun again when my new computer arrived. I was so excited. With a tech guy at my house to help we began to transfer files from the old to the new. 36 hours later not one had moved and so, Monday morning, I returned the computer. I still need a new one but you know what? I don’t care right now.

Silly me, I wrote a blog post on waiting…

It is here if you are interested. Please forgive me for putting it out into the ether!

I am going to continue this draft on my current computer. Watch how many different languages Word can spell check me in. (sometimes it is multiple languages on the same page) and continue to finalize this draft.

I hate wasting time. I had long hallways of inevitability and I really don’t like waiting!

To prove that everything is a learning experience…How does your character waste time? How do they fritter? Can you make it more active than just surfing the web?