John Wicker.com

Facing the future means facing change. Looking back, most of the change I have feared in life have worked out well. I must not fear change.

People ask me what I do, and increasingly these days I kick out some spiel about my day job. Things have been very up in the air with my job, and the time to make a change has definitely come. But all of this activity revolving around my pay check has left me focusing more on what I do to make money than what it is that I do.

In our world, we’re expected to identify ourselves with our jobs. I am a cop. She is a doctor. He is a teacher. They are plumbers. We go about the daily work that we do as if it defines our existence. For people that love what they do, for those that are both talented and lucky enough to make a living by also doing what they were meant to do, well… perhaps that person truly is a doctor or a teacher or a plumber.

I have been lucky enough to make choices about what I do for a living. Having made those choices, I have more of myself invested in my vocation than a guy who has no options. But I also choose what I do outside of my daily work, and those choices are at least as valid as the decisions I make about my vocation, if not more so.

I am defined by what I have done and the choices I have made. I am defined by my priorities and values. I am defined by what I choose to do moving forward and by what I choose to do right now, at this moment in time. I am a husband and a father, a musician, and a guy that has a day job.

To my way of thinking, life is a series of moments and encounters which are all focused through the value that you assign to them. Things will come and go, people will enter and then leave your life. You will grow and change, and your priorities will change as well. At this moment, I am no more that scared kid entering his first day of high school than I am the guy who was almost forced to decide between the lives of his wife or his first child. The past does not determine my future and my future does not define my present. I am what I choose to be, at this moment.

I do not choose to be my day job or my vocation. A bird is more than a feather. A guitar is more than its strings. I will not forget these words lest I become something less than what I am.

So what do you do?

About ten days ago I woke up with severe muscle and joint pain scattered around my body. I didn’t know it at the time, but I had caught a virus from my kids which gives kids a rash and gives adults joint pain. That night I woke up to go to the restroom and quickly found myself laying on the floor about five feet from the bathroom. I passed out again when I sat up.

What followed was a series of visits to medical facilities, trips to doctor’s offices, various tests, lots of time missed from work, and the loss of a large percentage of my body hair due to medical tape. If you are ever past due for a waxing for your arms or chest, just pass out and then go to an emergency room. They’ll fix you right up.

I have passed out on three different occasions in the last nine months, always under very specific circumstances and always when there has been some other underlying condition (sickness, changes to my routine or prescription medications, etc.) This has obviously caused a lot of concern and when they started saying things like “abnormal EKG” and “see a cardiologist” that concern started inching towards full on panic mode.

So that was my state of mind when I wrote my last Things to Do post. My family history is pretty terrible when it comes to heart disease, so to me, this was even more serious than it might have been for someone else.

At this point I’m still scheduled to undergo a series of tests over the course of the next two weeks. My family history still sucks but at this point the situation falls along the “something isn’t quite right” line as opposed to “you’re going to have a heart attack and drop dead at an early age like several members of your family already have” variety.