My dad went through open heart surgery to replace his aortic valve and repair his aorta. The surgery went well, but the recovery is long and hard. He’s home now bus still severely limited in what he can do, and dealing with the surgery’s side effects. We have about a month more of regular tests, hospital visits, and recovery before he can start building back his strength again.

I’ve had a lot of hospital time lately, which has meant a PTSD flare up. I’m struggling not to fall back to my old coping habits, and I’m journaling a lot to help with that – journaling and running.

I went to see a special “Angels in America” event – part 1 and part 2 in the same day, with a panel with the production’s creatives, and an exhibition about the play in between. It was a fantastic and very moving experience, and the 6 1/2 hours of the play passed in the blink of an eye. I bought three postcards with sketches from the production development and will use them to send postcards to my family.

Next month is my turn at the hospital, as my oncological checkup is coming up. I’ve started lining up the pre-checkup appointments and tests, but I really hope that I get my stress levels from my dad’s procedure down ASAP because they’re about to sky-rocket as the checkup day approaches.

Next month is one week 100 people and I intend to join it again – but this time I won’t be posting to social media. I’ve stopped posting and using social media for the past two months, and it’s been tremendously beneficial for both my productivity and my mental state. If you need encouragement to do the same I suggest watching this video or reading Cal Neport’s Deep Work.

I’m about to restart the cancer project (a series of essays on my journey with cancer), but not through the alphabet superset challenge, nor are my posts going to be deeply technical. I’m going back to personal essays with insights and tips embedded in them. I find them to be more genuine and more genuinely useful, and I didn’t like the arbitrary constraint of the alphabetical posts as a framework for the subject.

Have a great week!