I’ve been haunted lately, and it gets worse by the week. Haunted by the whole “I don’t know what’s happening” thing that i’ve talked about previously.

I don’t know how long i’m going to live, so don’t know how to make plans for my and my gorgeous wife’s life. Do we “settle down” here on the chance I don’t live forever, and buy a nice house, build a nice garden, and enjoy the time together while we can? Or do we travel like mad, in the hope we’ll have time to do that later?

I don’t know how long i’ll have decent health, so don’t know what to do with my career. Do I commit to it hoping for a long(ish) life and do more workplace training, then “climb the ladder” more hoping for a successful future? Or do I give in to the idea that I won’t live until old age, and just entrench myself safely into my current job, which I love more than any other job i’ve ever had. Just work hard, do well, and solidify my position. I don’t even know how long i’ll be able to do that, considering the degrading condition of my leg, causing me to already need to work from home a few days a week. That’s yet another part of all this that hurts… I love my job, LOTS, and am stuck at home as a cripple watching everything go on from the outside (yes, it IS a bad thing, i’d much rather be able to go to the office and feel like i’m actually PART of it… working from home is very overrated).

Irene and I want to travel the world. We want to live in Tokyo for 6 months, and Canada for a year or 2. We want to spend 3 months going around Europe with a Eurail pass. We want to live in a city apartment for a year and enjoy a crazy nightlife, then buy land and become self-sustainable farmers into our old age making our own cheeses and keeping pigs. Doing all these things in an entire lifetime seemed easy before, but now it seems impossible, and that’s probably the main thing destroying me mentally.

It all comes down to that “do I have 2 years or 20 years” thing.

I know logic says “NO-ONE knows how long they’ve got, anyone would get hit by a bus tomorrow” and even though that’s true, it’s still different. The actual odds of you getting hit by a bus, or dying randomly, within the next year, are pretty small. The odds of me dying in the next few years, are something like 50%. Just knowing that statistic has changed absolutely everything to me. It’s not longer a “Yeah, i COULD get hit by a bus, but unlikely” to “Flip a coin, heads I get to see my kids grow up, tails i’m dead before they’re born”.

Thinking about all this lately has completely haunted me. I lose sleep over it, get bouts of depression, even get physically ill after stressing about it. I find myself getting bursts of extreme optimism and motivation, to suddenly wondering why I even bother getting up and going to work in the morning when I could be dead in a year.

I gave up my dreams of doing my own web development business because I just couldn’t find the motivation or energy to do it anymore. I changed my “life plan” from “travel the world, live in japan, live in canada, then settle down on a farm” to “buy an apartment so when I die Irene has a place to live”.

I’ve always been someone who knew they could do huge and amazing things in life, and really leave a mark. Everything i’ve ever done, i’ve excelled at. I always thought i’d end up being some kind of successful web consultant who helped manage and build huge projects that really made a difference in people’s lives, then use my own income from that to let me & irene live our own dream life (our dreams aren’t huge). Now, thanks to the crippled leg and constant lack of energy i’ll be impressed if I can buy us a cheap apartment and maybe go on a few holidays.

You hear the expression “fear of the unknown” lots when people talk about moving to another city, starting a new job, or trying a new restaurant… only thing is, now “the unknown” is a matter of life or death, and it’s haunting me.