hustling for the good life

Sometimes I hear “you’re so lucky.” And when I do - I cringe inside. I know I curate this life on Instagram and social media that yes, does at first glance, appear lucky. Now, I’m not saying my life isn’t good because oh it is. And I too sometimes attribute this beautiful life to luck.

But, it wasn’t always good. It wasn’t always easy - and this isn’t even easy to be honest. When I was first diagnosed I was dumbfounded mainly because life had already been incredibly cruel to me - how can cancer also be thrown in? I think my life’s story would shock a lot of people because I overcame (or seemingly so) and moved forward. I curated and worked incredibly hard to have this good life.

However, as good as the good days are the hard days are even harder. What goes up must come down. It’s a hard cruel crash to reality between the beautiful trips and days you see on social media. I give you a soft glimpse to those hard days. But unless you’re living alongside it, there’s no understanding it.

I don’t say this for empathy or sympathy. I say this because if you take anything away from this beautiful life and the pieces I share with you, please let it be this - hustle for the good life.

Take stock, take a look around, if you see my life - a person living with Stage 4 cancer and think “Wow, she’s lucky.” If you’re envious of the life I have to work incredibly hard to keep, spend a ton of money on treatments and doctor’s appointments that drive me to days on the couch and struggling, endless scans and needles and pain, I think, and I mean this lovingly, you might want to rework some things in your life.

There have been many many times when I’ve sat back and looked at my life and I wasn’t pleased with what I saw. Whether it was jobs, friends, relationships, things needed an overhaul. And each overhaul, as painful as they were, led me here to this. I made the incredibly hard decisions to give up a lot of good in search of really great - so this is where the luck came in - I found the really great. But is that luck if I have the great people in my life, who make this life so beautiful, because I did the work to become someone that these great people want in their lives, too?

So, you don’t need cancer, incurable or not, to hustle for the good life. You can take a look around and figure out what you’re lacking and go after it. The right people will find you and they will stick.