I choose

The Choice

The intellect of man is forced to choose
perfection of the life, or of the work,
And if it take the second must refuse
A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.
When all that story’s finished, what’s the news?
In luck or out the toil has left its mark:
That old perplexity an empty purse,
Or the day’s vanity, the night’s remorse.

-- William Butler Yeats

I choose. I chose to return home and go back to work. Gave my doc the "return to work" papers and told her to sign them. I've been home 6 days. Being back at work was good in a lot of ways. People missed me, said they were glad to see me, and gave me time to get back into the groove before they started asking for help again. It is a choice to return here... to the same company and bosses I've worked for going on ten years now. While I was away I received a few job offers off monster.com, one of them was a 50% pay increase and twice as much vacation time as I currently have. I turned it down, which no few of my intimates has told me was insane. But I had good reasons for making the choice to remain, not the least of which is that there has been so much uncertainty, change, and loss in the past few months that I really don't want to put myself through the additional stress of adapting to a new workplace, particularly seeing as my line of work is stressful enough.

So much uncertainty in life. In my life right now. I find myself hesitating to commit myself to doing things. I've no idea when Caro is going to breathe her last, I've no idea how the family will handle her death versus her dying. And I have plans. I really do. Life is uncertain but there are things I have chosen for myself and my life and I'm feeling very powerful in my choosing, in the possibilities that I am creating. In three months I should accomplish a major milestone that I have been working toward for a year now. By then, hopefully there will be closure with Caro and I can go forward with the career map I laid out for myself in September. Then, I expected to be in a very different situation by Spring 2010. We'll see. Sometimes, having too many possibilities or choices is worse than having too few. And me, I'm being encouraged along two different paths in my profession, as well as being encouraged to take other things like my writing and photography more seriously. And my relationships, oh my... the joys of loving and being loved by more than one person can at times be overshadowed by the complications of feeling pulled in multiple directions at once. I want... something in me says. I want... I want... and then, when the time comes, I commit. I choose. I choose.