Tonight's picture was taken in July of 2002. If I had to title this photo, I would call it, "can you hear what I hear?" That day I was snapping photos of Mattie. I was trying to get his attention and honestly I had been trying to take photos of him for days because I wanted just the right photo to send out to friends and family! Needless to say this wasn't the one I selected! Mattie was three months old here and FULLY on!!!
Quote of the day: Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see a shadow. ~ Helen Keller
I made up my mind this morning that I was somehow going to plow through a stack of research articles, do more research article searching and then begin writing one of the book chapters that I committed to writing for the Foundation this summer. This has been an absolutely daunting task for me. Mainly because I am exhausted from a very full year with the Foundation. The notion of sitting still, concentrating by the computer, and delving into more research, and focusing on childhood cancer this summer really wasn't how I planned on spending my July. In fact, it makes me upset when I think about it. When I committed to the two chapters, I really did not give much thought to their deadlines. The hardest part to any project is starting and I find the most difficult part to writing anything is the introduction. I have an outline that I am working from, but even the problem with the outline is the questions I want to answer! In many cases I do not have concrete answers. Or at least answers that have solid research to back them up! That would be okay for my blog writings, but not great for a book chapter which will have an audience of medical doctors. Any case, as Heller's quote illustrated for us in a figurative sense.... I put my face to the sunshine today. I literally sat in Mattie's room, at my desk by the window all day. I had Mattie's fountains going on our deck, the windows open and I literally worked all day long. In one day's time, I generated one page. I realize, pathetic, but to me it was the hardest page to generate. I may keep going back at it, but it is a start, from which I will be building. I also have two of our wonderful psycho-oncologists who work with Foundation collaborating on this chapter with me. So it is a team effort, but as lead author of this chapter, I have the majority of the work and responsibility and though this is a chapter based on research, Mattie's case and history will be integrated within it to give the content meaning and depth. That to me makes the chapter much more complex and harder to write, because Mattie's story needs to be finely weaved in a meaningful manner.
So I am signing off for today, because at this point, the computer and I are almost one!
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