Exo-Progress...o

Dear blog,

Today I saw my friend Nick Hollon for our weekly meeting regarding a joint project the two of us are working on. After I was diagnosed with AML (acute myeloid leukemia), he put together a project to run 3000 miles to raise money and support for leukemia research, and has since become an ultramarathoner (essentially crazy people who enjoy lots of leg pain). He's been working on his memoir about running, life, liberty, and the pursuit (get it?...cause he's a runner!) of more insane races. I've been working on my own book about my journey through hell, a little bit farther, and back. A while ago we decided to team up and work together and have been meeting up recently to discuss progress and work on ideas as a duo. Today we discussed ways of making our books sound interesting and how to pitch them to publishers. The guy has such an interesting story to tell, his madness knows no bounds, and it's inspirational as all get out. You would like him blog, he's a cool cat. 

A cool cat = Nick

While he's been editing his first draft, I've been pumping out my own rough draft of my own book. As you may know, I went through all kinds of hellish insane sh** and want to share my story. Well, reliving all the memories from the chemotherapy and all of the side effects from treatment has been...difficult. Some of the memories were locked away, so retrieving them is almost like experiencing. them for the very first time. It leaves me shaken up sometimes, near tears other times, and occasionally a happy memory will slip through and make me laugh. But, my lovely blog, I'm getting to the worst of it, and it's left me wondering if I can do this. I know the doubt isn't helpful, but I must continue through. If not for myself and the healing that writing out my story might bring, than for the people it could help: other cancer survivors, their families, people who need to become aware of just how difficult living with some of the side effects from treatments are. And of course, I can't let down Nick. So I will shoulder my pain, stare it down, remind myself that I have already survived and won, and write on.

I've been thinking of things to put on you lately as well blog. I don't want to neglect you and leave you to rot in obscurity like your predecessors, I'm already quite fond of you. I'll be tweaking your appearance too, so you'll look all beautified in the future. One of my ideas is to include writing of some sort, perhaps excerpts from my memoirs or even my freakishly long novel (that will be split into a series once I get back on that project), maybe short stories. Another idea is to actually see if I can do a communal short story, starting a sentence and seeing if I can get people who read you to come up with the next one, and the next person to come up with the next sentence, and so on and so forth. What do you think blog, would you like that?

Today also marks a glorious day in space exploration! (Blog, if you want to skip this part, go ahead. I'm acutely aware that my interest in space may not match yours) 715 new exoplanets were discovered using the data from the Kepler space telescope, nearly DOUBLING the amount of exoplanets we already knew! We're getting close to TWO THOUSAND known exoplanets! Of those 715, four were near-Earth sized and within the habitable zone, making them possible candidates for harboring life as we know it! (This of course does not account for life as we do NOT know it, but really, that's not the point at the moment) It might even be that I helped find some of these planets, thanks to a site called Planet Hunters, where you can sift through starlight data and find dips in light where an exoplanet passes in front of its host star! It's a lot more exciting than it sounds (to me anyways), I always get giddy when I see a possible transit, knowing that the dip in light I'm seeing might be a world trillions upon trillions of miles away...and wonder if anything is looking back.

I hope you and I can have a nice, pleasant relationship my blog minion, for I do enjoy your company. Talk to you soon my itsy-bytsy friend. 

Your benevolent overlord, Andrew