Surgery is four days away.
I wish I could say I’m not counting, but I am. Not obsessively, not every minute of the day—but enough that I always know where I am in the countdown. I can distract myself for hours at a time, sometimes long enough to feel almost normal, but the moment things slow down, it comes back into focus.
Usually late at night.
Brain: You scared yet?
Me: Not really.
Brain: Okay, but just checking.
That’s the rhythm right now. Not panic. Not denial. Just a low-level awareness that doesn’t fully go away. If I said that out loud to strangers, it might raise some eyebrows, so instead I’ve leaned into the most socially acceptable coping mechanism there is: productivity.
I’ve been staying busy in the most boring ways possible. Laundry. Mopping. Organizing things that have been disorganized for years. The kind of tasks that never feel urgent—until suddenly they do. It turns out routine is a decent way to keep your thoughts from wandering too far ahead of you.
Eventually, though, the list ran out of easy wins and landed on the one thing I’d been avoiding for a long time: making a will.
I didn’t put it off because I thought it would be hard. I put it off because it required me to sit still with ideas I’ve always preferred to keep abstract. Mortality. Finality. Loose ends. I told myself I didn’t really have anything worth worrying about. Other than Tugboat, of course—and if I die before he does, I’m confident he’ll drain my bank accounts, find a sugar mama, and disappear into a life of leisure somewhere expensive.
Tugboat has never been to the beach, but he feels like a beach dog. I can imagine him on the French Riviera, wearing linen, yelling at people in a language he doesn’t speak, living his best life. He’ll be fine.
Still, it turns out there are things I need to take care of. Practical things. Stuff I don’t want tangled up in probate or left unresolved because I avoided dealing with it. On a normal timeline, this would just be annoying paperwork. With surgery days away, it feels heavier than that—not dramatic, just uncomfortably well-timed.
Thinking about a will has a way of pulling other thoughts along with it. I’m not afraid of thinking about mortality, but it’s not something I’ve ever lingered on. Doing this made it unavoidable.
I still believe I have a lot of life left to live. That hasn’t changed. But I’m also aware that I’m at the age where these conversations make sense. Where friends start getting sick. Where losses accumulate slowly and then all at once. Where you realize there’s more past than future.
That realization is supposed to be sobering. For me, it’s been clarifying.
It’s stripped away some of the noise. I can see the things I still want to do more clearly now, and I can see how little patience I have for the rest. I’ve always been bad at saying no. I say yes because it’s easier, because it avoids friction, because I don’t want to disappoint people. Lately, that’s changing.
Time feels more finite, and that makes decisions simpler. I’m saying no without the long internal negotiations. If someone is planning to ask me to compete in extreme ironing, chase a wheel of cheese down a hill, or do anything that requires unnecessary risk or effort for no real payoff, they’re going to be disappointed.
I’m also realizing that while I genuinely like my job and the people I work with, I don’t want work to be the thing that consumes the best parts of my life. The version of the future that keeps resurfacing is quieter: somewhere near the water, good books, excellent coffee, and days that don’t need to be optimized.
So no, I don’t want to be making a will. Even if it does keep my mind occupied enough to avoid thinking too hard about surgery, it’s not how I’d choose to spend my time. But I’m glad I did it. Not because of the paperwork, but because of what it forced me to confront.
It’s strange how easy it is to find small moments of clarity in the middle of absolute shit (colon cancer pun intentional). I’m not grateful for cancer. I never will be. But I am grateful for the way it’s sharpened my focus. For the growth it’s forced. Just not for the thing that caused it.
Four days to go.
For now, I’ll keep doing the laundry, checking things off lists, and staying just busy enough to keep my thoughts where they belong—right here, instead of too far ahead.