Two years cancer free – how can that be? In many ways it still feels like yesterday that I was diagnosed.

Being  here, now, with no more scans scheduled, has shown me how small of a time frame two years really is. It’s a blip in an 80 or 90 or 100 year life (which I plan to have, obviously.) Treatment itself was only seven months, but it felt eternal. These two years, however, have gone by so quickly!

Why does this matter? Because I have always been a deadline driven person – I’ve felt like if I didn’t accomplish something by x timeframe (usually a certain age), that I wasn’t good enough. I was “behind”. I wasn’t doing what I was supposed to do. I wasn’t a functional adult. Whatever. I had all these made-up reasons as to why not accomplishing something by this made-up date in my head meant I was a failure.

The second thing is – I still don’t know what my “thing” is. I still don’t necessarily know what my passion is. I love writing, for sure – and this blog is definitely one of my important projects. But it’s not the be-all-end all. I thought I had to have my “thing” figured out by now, because for the love of everything holy, I’ve been an “adult” for almost 10 years now. How could I not know who I am and what I like yet?

What I’m realizing, though, is that being an “adult” or a certain age doesn’t mean you stop growing and changing and evolving. I wrote on the chalkboard wall in my kitchen just the other day: You can reinvent yourself as many times as you want. Deadlines do not exist.

I’m trying very hard to live my life in this way. So right now, I’m pretty dedicated to the gym and to my nutrition. It’s been about nine months of straight gym attendance for me, and I don’t see that stopping any time soon. But even in those nine months, things have shifted. I started out going to a commercial gym focusing on five main lifts (front and back squats, deadlifts, benchpress, push press, if you give a shit.) Now I go to a Crossfit gym five days a week and while those lifts are a part of it, there’s a whole ton more incorporated.

A year before that, my ‘thing’ was not the gym. I don’t even remember what my thing was. Maybe surviving. Probably that. 😉 But the point is – right now Crossfit is my thing. Will it be my thing in a year? I don’t know – I might change my mind, and I’m finally learning that it is okay to do that. It’s okay to grow, and to change, and to become a different person with different likes and dislikes and hobbies and passions. I might not – I might Crossfit til I’m 90, who knows. That’s not the point.

I should qualify though, that there are days I’m not entirely jazzed on getting up and going to work out or eating well or drinking 4 litres of water. Sometimes it’s a grind. But I’ve learned the difference between ‘I’m currently lacking some motivation but I’m still passionate about this’ and ‘This doesn’t make me happy anymore’. There is a difference. A big one.

Two years is not a very long time. Five years isn’t either, really. It’s okay to be (almost) 28 and to still not know what your thing is, or to know that maybe your “thing” is temporary and you’ll eventually outgrow it. You don’t stop growing just because you’ve become an adult. It’s okay to spend a year or two doing something – whether it be a hobby, or a job, or something else entirely – and then realize that you don’t like it anymore and find something new. It’s better to do that than to stay stuck somewhere that doesn’t make you happy.

Cheers to two years out, the low-risk of relapse category, and learning that maybe I’ll never really “find myself” because I’m too busy reinventing myself to suit the way my life currently sits.  I want to always be passionate about the things I do, and if I’m not – I want to find something new that lights that fire. So may I live the next five, ten, fifteen, twenty years entirely on fire for whatever I’m doing – that’s my ultimate goal.