I had coffee with a friend this afternoon—someone I've known for more than 10 years. He's a former colleague with whom I've maintained a correspondence over the past decade, facilitated in recent years by my blog. Every Sunday morning, he sends me a response to my posts from the previous week—a sort of "Sunday Synopsis" that comes as a reply to my Saturday Synopsis. He congratulates me on milestones, commiserates with me on setbacks, and often teaches me something new. (See my post on the word Chipil as just one example.)

This was our first sit-down conversation since COVID and cancer. We talked about an opera he had seen last weekend, my health, and our shared love for cooking, among many things. Towards the end of our coffee chat, he presented me with a beautiful vase that he had commissioned. The circles on the vase, including the one around the word Jenesis, represent a perfect shape (the circle is said to be a universal symbol of connection, unity, harmony, wholeness and eternity) while the wavy rim of the vase signifies that life is not always perfect. It made me think that my life is perfect in its imperfections. How apropos.

My friend had wanted to give me such a gift to celebrate my 1,000th post, but hadn't been able to pull it off. How coincidental, then, that we should meet today, on the occasion of my 1,200th post—at least, today is the 1,200th day since I began to write Jenesis.

As I walked home from the coffee shop, I listened to the Desert Island Discs episode with Professor Averil Mansfield, a retired vascular surgeon who was the first female Professor of Surgery in the United Kingdom, and an accomplished pianist. She shared this story about the importance of music in her life:

When I was going off to university—I was at a girls school in Blackpool and I'd never been away from home before—and my piano teacher said to me, "You're going to be lonely when you go to your university in Liverpool, and if you are, find a piano and sit down and play, and you'll have friends." And I took her advice. I remember it was the evening of my second day in the Hall of Residence, and I was quite lonesome. I really hadn't met anybody very much. And I found a piano and I sat and played. And, sure enough, by the end of that evening, I had a group of friends around me.

This story resonated with me. Eight days after being unofficially diagnosed with ovarian cancer, I sat down at my keyboard (computer, not piano) and started typing. I shared the resulting blog post with a small group of people: family, friends, colleagues. Immediately, I experienced what Averil Mansfield had encountered: love, support, companionship. 1,200 days on, with my blog available to anyone who wishes to read it, I'm still feeling surrounded by friends.

When I reached my 800th post, I launched my Categories page, which organizes my posts by theme and provides a helpful summary of the useful tidbits in each article. I wrote then: "At some point, I will take all the advice in Jenesis and compile it into a book, but that's a project for another day (or another year), perhaps when I've reached my 1000th post." Over the past 400 days, I've added more and more posts to my Categories page, which I see as the first step in writing a book that draws from the best of Jenesis, but I still have many more posts to catalogue.

Could I move faster if I wanted to? Yes. But I also want to live life, go for coffee, enjoy the moment. In the past 1,200+ days, I've had sad moments and happy moments, challenges and successes, days focused on cancer and days focused on anything but. It's been:

Through it all, I've experienced more happiness, gratitude and love than sadness, self-pity and misery.

After my 600th post, a friend responded to say: "I can’t believe that 600 days has flown by so quickly." I've now doubled that number to 1,200. Long may it continue.