Boring Life

February 7th — A writer friend of mine made some profound remarks to my comment that my blogs were boring. He said he thinks everybody has profound thoughts and feelings, but educated people are more inclined to notice them and verbose individuals have an easier time writing them down. He continued, “also, I think you assume that other people are as open about their fears and suffering as you are. Many people are afraid to lose face — even to their doctor. You’d be surprised at what small details in your descriptions other people would find interesting. I remember some famous writer saying that the hardest part about writing is recognizing that your life story is not as boring as it appears to you and not as interesting as you’d wish it to be.” Deep deep comments to my way of thinking. I can’t imagine someone not being open about fear and suffering, especially when facing an ugly battle with an aggressive life-threatening disease. Yet another friend said that she finds my blogs more upbeat than I am in real life. Do I want to be more positive and can alter my writing even if I can’t change my daily persona? I know there are good treatments and advanced research and new medicines to help combat my illness, but the fact is that I am more likely to die of breast cancer than any other cause. Greg confronted one of these moments of mortality by saying, “then let’s try to make that as far in the future as possible. If you’re 90 and die of breast cancer, is that such a bad thing?” I loved the line about everyone’s lifestory not being as boring as it seems nor as interesting as we’d like. Isn’t that true of everyone’s life? I wonder if people like Madonna or Winston Churchill or Barack Obama consider their lives boring and interesting in the same degrees as we ordinary folks. Maybe they are just too busy getting stuff done in life to think much about it.