Who am I ? Where am I?

I just started a part-time job in retail--again. I had one five years ago, at a place that wasn't very professional. This place, however is *very* professional. It's different from any place I've ever worked in my whole life. And I see possibilities in working there....

But I think to myself: how long can I work retail? Is it really worth it to put in time thinking about it....

Being healthy again has got me thinking more and more about the time that was more or less wasted being ill (one way or another.) How much of my life I lost...

And how much of that life, as a professional working person, wasn't afforded me due to being ill. It's hard for me to see how to synthesize one set of experiences with another and how to move things forward. Part of that is also from working jobs that were, essentially, dead ends. Even my work in Princeton was mostly a dead-end although there were fascinating experiences connected with it (symposiums, lectures, etc.) There wasn't going to be much in the way of advancement, of learning new things, of becoming something "other than."

I see that where I am now. There are opportunities. And I wonder if any of those opportunities could come my way.

Or if it's too late.

That's the one thing about being healthy--I can see where time was lost, and I go "oh, crap! now I have to catch up! can I do it?"

But I can't do it all at once, all in one or two days or weeks or months. It will take longer than that--I just don't know how long.

Then there's the "damage"--or perceived damage--that I've done to myself when I was ill and trying to work. When I wasn't the most pleasant person to work with, and certainly not the most efficient. I simply couldn't get things done because I was so ill. and I couldn't refuse things that I should have--because I couldn't take on other work to balance out what I was doing...

That's another piece of it: balancing types of work. It might not be an either/or proposition when it comes to jobs, but balancing one and another. Seeing the jobs as complimentary--as they really are--and not letting one take over the other. This is hard. How does this balance happen? Can I maintain it? Can I use one job to illuminate aspects of the other? Is there some future in a synthesis of jobs and can I use that to my advantage?

I don't know the answers to these questions. It's exciting, yet I'm a bit afraid of being overwhelmed by all of it, the way I was in the past....

I have to remember that things are new now, that I'm healthy and not where I was.

It's the newness, though, of it all. Is the newness stable? or am I just hanging around, waiting for another illness to take me down and out?

How am I as a healthy person? What does that mean to be a healthy person?

Who am I as a healthy person?

I don't really know. Even the Healthy Me is new to me.

How strange is that: to not know oneself as a healthy person?

Maybe it's just going to take time to get to know the healthy person.

Maybe that's the answer to all of it: Time. Just Time....