Peace in Holding Patterns

I hate waiting.

There. Entry over.

Except not over, because waiting is my full-time job at the moment. Nearly every important thing happening in my life right now is taking place somewhere I can’t see it, controlled by people I can’t hurry along, on timelines I can’t do a damn thing about.

Which, for someone who deals with uncertainty by doing things, can be brutal.

Let’s start with the scary, furry one.

Bad Moon Ride is out on submission with several editors at gib five publishing imprints and killer independent presses, courtesy of my intrepid lit agent, Diego Harrison at SBR Media. For the uninitiated, this is called Being on Submission, a status most writers work towards. The manuscript is finished, polished, revised within an inch of its life, and finally (after ten years, in my case) sitting in front of editors who have the potential to decide its trajectory.

And holy shit is it exciting.

But also maddening.

There’s nothing left for me to do.

I can’t tweak a chapter. I can’t sharpen another line. I can’t send an editor a helpful little note saying, “Hey, just checking to see if you’ve gotten to the werewolf motorcycle book yet.

I mean, I could, and that type of desperate, forced move is exactly what pre-sobriety E.C. would have done. But today’s version understands the catastrophic damage such a step would wreck.

So, I wait, and stay grateful I’ve even gotten this far.

Then there’s the far scarier one.

Ten days ago, I had another PET scan.

For anyone who hasn’t been following this particular subplot of my life, I’ve been dealing with colorectal cancer since 2020. Several years ago, I was evaluated at the University of Colorado Anschutz for a possibly game-changing CAR-T cell clinical trial under Dr. Christopher Lieu. I was accepted, but there was an unusual catch: my cancer wasn’t doing enough…cancering. The tumor burden was too small and too slow-moving to proceed.

It’s a bizarre place to sit; having cancer, qualifying for an experimental cancer treatment, and then being told, essentially, come back when you have more cancer. I’m still in talks with them, and the team believes I’m a strong candidate for the next trial, now FDA approved. Read about it HERE. Truly, next-gen stuff, but I won’t know if it can move the needle for me until I know what’s up here.

Which brings us back to the PET scan.

Normally, I would have had the results in 48 hours. Instead, it’s been over two weeks now. Turns out there’s a massive imaging backlog due to this UGH/WakeMed dispute that pushed a mountain of scans to Duke and UNC. So, somewhere in the system are pictures of the inside of my body (hopefully not reacting to glucose) waiting for somebody to read them.

And once I have those results, I’ll know what comes next.

Is it time to move forward in Colorado? Or with a new cell-based treatment being trialed right here at Duke? Or possibly radiate? More surgery? Or, hell – Is my cancer STILL not cancering enough for any action to be taken?

So I wait, and stay grateful that I’ve made it this far.

Fortunately, because I enjoy building my life around things that require enormous amounts of patience, I’ve started a watch company.

Yes, SYNTRAK is real.

The debut ROADCRAFT Chronograph collection has gone from sketches and ideas to industrial design and engineering. My partner factory in Hong Kong now has the industrial drawings and STEP files. They’re in the process of reviewing everything and making the adjustments necessary to actually manufacture prototypes.

Prototypes I need before I can photograph the actual watches. Photographs I need before I can finish the website. The website I need before I can launch, where I find out if this crazy idea I’ve been obsessing over has legs (spoiler: it does. The launch line is dope).

So again, I’ve done my part and sent everything through the door.

Now I stand outside, waiting, grateful that I’ve taken it this far.

But, ya’ll…it is fucking mental to have all this happening simultaneously.

Somewhere, an editor may be reading Bad Moon Ride.

Somewhere, a radiologist may be looking at glowing images of my body.

Somewhere in Hong Kong, an engineer may be staring at a STEP file of a watch line I cooked up and figuring out how to build it.

And somewhere in Colorado sits another possible road forward if the cancer decides to wake up enough to warrant that journey.

Meanwhile, I’m here, present and grateful, at peace.

That’s the freedom that comes in recognizing which things belong to you, and which ones don’t.

I wrote the book.

I got the scan.

I went to Colorado.

I designed the watches.

I found the factory.

I sent the files.

The work that was mine got done.

Everything else is on somebody else.

And I can either spend my days staring at my inbox, refreshing patient portals, wondering what an editor is thinking, imagining what a radiologist might see, and pestering a factory twelve time zones away…

Or…I can make something else.

So, that’s what I’m doing.

I’m writing the follow-up to Bad Moon Ride.

It’s called Veins & Vices, part one of a trilogy.

And it’s about…

Nah.

It’s your turn to wait.