If you’ve heard the latest Podcast episode, you know I’m taking a medical leave for a few months for health reasons. I’ve had my diagnosis, chemo and radiation, recovery, and surgery prep over the last 4 months. We didn’t talk about it on the show. It gave me something fun and normal to do with my friends. Zip, Ed and Spike are all incredibly smart and kind… We’ve had some great conversations, with the kind of love, honesty, and integrity that’s not typical media fare.
As many of you know, I’m not fond of Social Networks, though I use them a bit, mostly to see friends, family, and get a few laughs. Talking about this on Facebook wouldn’t work for me, though I understand it’s a source of support for many others. (Using Facebook to send your friends here is perfectly ok with me, and if I’m honest… thank you).
So as I go through this next phase, I’m going to try and blog here as I can. Depending on how things are going, there may be some gaps between posts. This is for anyone who’s interested, and I’m inviting Zip, Ed, and Spike to throw up topics too. David Lee, our webmaster finally convinced me to enable comments… so you are all invited to this small soapbox. All I insist it that you please be nice to each other.
What will it be? We will see. Every week I look at what the narratives are, and try to imagine what we might be overlooking. I put that out there for discussion. That’s really my philosophy in a nutshell. Think for yourself. Empathetically hear many viewpoints. Challenge everything you are told, and be open minded and unafraid to change or be wrong. As many of you know, I’m wrong a lot.
And even though our audience size in this retirement improv poker game we’ve been having is modest… we are just crossing 500,000 plays since we started podcasting. There are about 3,000 people who listen weekly and you are all considered dear friends.
Thank you for being there.
One more thing. About my health. It’s serious. And there are three forks this journey can take. One may be brief, nuff said. The middle fork, and most likely, as I’m an excellent candidate for surgery, brings me back to a good quality of life for at least a few years. The third fork in this path has led me to two patients from the same medical team as me, alive and kicking in their 80’s. I ran into both by miraculous “accident”.
I am being cared for by one of the best surgical teams in the world, at Virginia Mason, in Seattle. In addition to top tier talent, they’ve got state of the art robotic assisted technology. Anyone who knows me knows that I love cool new tech.
Lastly, though I’m certainly no bible thumper, I’ve often shared my belief in a higher power (that’s a 12 step word for people who don’t want to push “God” on others). This experience has made me even more confident that loving each other is the answer to just about every difficulty we may face in this life, as individuals, families, communities, nations, and as all of civilization.
And we can’t get better by ridiculing each other, calling those we disagree with “stupid”, or dividing ourselves into groups that spend more time opposing enemies than looking for common ground. Not to mention that those particular behaviors are the most profitable tactics for algorithms that control much of our discourse. Tsk tsk. Let’s do better, in every moment we can be kinder.
So with that said, thanks for listening. Please know that any and all prayers are received with gratitude.
Bob Rivers.
