I don’t know if you remember, but last year I went through a whole process of wondering whether I should purchase a ‘one-line-a-day’ diary. They were all for 5 years. FIVE YEARS. At the time I got it, when I was finishing chemo, five years felt like a lifetime away and I wasn’t sure if I dared to think about that future. Was I tempting fate by buying the diary? (No, I don’t believe in that). Could I maybe get a 2 or 3 year one? (No, they don’t really exist). Five years it was. Five years. Would I even make it to one?

The day I bought my diary, crowd favourite Rosa (mine too) wrote in hers, for a year in advance, ‘one year of Jen defying the odds’. Coming up to a year later, she said ‘Jen, why have I written this in my diary? I mean, it’s true, but what is this date?’ It was the day I bought the diary.

One year after I bought the diary, I was not only alive, I was in Paris.

April 1, 2022: Feeling overwhelmed by being off treatment but still having tumour in my skull. So I ordered this damn book as an ACT OF REBELLION. Also went for a walk.

April 1, 2023: Nice sleep in and did some work on my projects, then went out for a nutella crêpe on Crêpe Row. Found a Church on the way and stopped in for a wander and meditate. Made it to one year, and in Paris no less…

In the few weeks after getting back from my month of living in Paris, I launched a business, got accepted for a scholarship to do an MBA, and booked a trip to go for a yoga trip to India with my Mum and some of her (our) friends near the end of the year…
When I was talking with my parents about wanting to go, they mentioned (tentatively, not wanting to curb my excitement) – what if things ‘happened’ with regards to my cancer.
‘It won’t,’ I said confidently. ‘I’m done living with one foot in the grave.’

I had a slight… weird feeling on the day after doing my interview for the MBA. It made me realise how much good work I’ve done to NOT think about the stupid c word. How well I’ve done believing that I no longer have it, that it won’t progress, that I will be fine. That I can hope for some sort of future. Because that is a much nicer narrative than that whole ‘dying any day’ thing. It’s a story I’d much rather believe.

As Derek Sivers says, beliefs are useful, not true.

But after that interview I suddenly thought ‘but what if I really am not going to see the year out’. It brought me back to a question which often seems to be buzzing around the place – what would you do if you had 50 years left? 10 years? 1 year? 1 week? The answers will be different, right? If I only have up to two years left, I don’t want to spend the majority of it studying business to improve a future I won’t get. Hell no. But if I live forever (which I’m absolutely planning on), then 18 months for an MBA is nothing.

But, of course, none of us know how long we’ve got. And frankly, I’m done with only living for the right here and now. Of course there is a lot of value in living for today. Often in these busy lives we flit through, we’re reminded to do it more. But when you’ve been denied a future for so long… well… I want to give myself the gift of a future back. Because all of us either do or don’t have a future. And we can really only live in this moment, so allowing ourselves to think of a future is just a narrative anyway. There’s only so long one can exist in survival mode (I’ve been in it on and off for the past 6 years, and more on than off over the last few) and since I’ve been given a breather, it would be so silly to deny myself of actually having it. But it was in that afternoon after my interview that I realised how long it had been since my future had been flagged as uncertain, and at times, people had tried to remind me of it daily.

No more.

I can’t solve the riddle of whether I should commit 2 years of my life to something that will probably be a lot of hard work at the time, probably not super enjoyable, but will get me towards a future I’m daydreaming about. I haven’t got answers whether that’s a worthwhile use of my time. But allowing myself to dream feels like the right thing. And I’ve never been one to not then take action.

I said no to the MBA. It was enough to get accepted and I said I’d only do it if I got a full scholarship. And although I got a huge one (four, in fact), it didn’t cover it all. But when they sent through the course structure and I saw the whole first year looked like economics, finance and exams EVERY MONTH I realised I value my life far too much to waste any of it on that. Two degrees is enough for now, I think.

But I know I have a future. It’s up to me to decide that, and it’s a nice story, so I’ll keep it. I can’t stress enough that no one knows the future. Especially not doctors working with a problem they know so little about. I’ve since got other medical professionals on my rotor who have a lot more hope for me than my conventional team does. So I’m looking forward to coming back here in a year to report on TWO years of Jen defying the odds. Coz I never liked odds anyway and I’m nothing if not a rebel.