What If We Only Had One Year?

I began watching a television series last night called The Big C. Laura Linney plays a woman who has just been diagnosed with terminal cancer with one year to live and how she suddenly begins to live her life for herself. It’s kind of a bittersweet approach to the subject. The series is quite up beat and focuses on the positive aspects of living instead of the downside of someone dying. I totally identify with her character so much, and in a sense, it’s how I came about my inception for this project. Four years ago I had been diagnosed with cancer, Lymphoma, for those who are just coming into the project, and my approach was much like Laura’s character. In many ways it turned my life around as I suddenly began to feel vibrancy in my living that I had never known. I spent a summer in hell going through chemotherapy and the out come was worth the suffering because since it has been in remission. It took me several years to get back on track and realign my life. I had always had in the back of my head an idea to do a project that would explore the most creative side of ourselves if we only had one year to make it happen. Hence this Naked Man Project was born. It is one of the reasons I am so candid about my thoughts in my writing. I have approached this project as if this were going to be the last year of my life and am trying to put down all my experience, thoughts and feelings into something that is a tangible marker for whom I have been.

I felt a certain desperation in the beginning to get it all out there at once, but now feel like it has matured into something beyond what I ever imagined. It has actually become a huge healing process for wounds I have felt so deeply for such a long time. Wounds that festered and, in a sense, were eating away at my livelihood. Facing my fears of aging, angst toward a misunderstood childhood, struggling to survive in a failing economy. It is connecting me to so many people that have identified with some of my issues and allowed me to develop some amazing friendships around the globe. But best of all it has brought me closer to the ones I love around me; I have re-connected with my family in a way I have never known. This weekend I am actually going to go up to spend the weekend with my brothers and father and families, which I really would not have done otherwise. To write about one self deeply brings the collective universe into alignment. This summer I have been more content then I have ever been in my life. I am finding clarity in so many areas I was clueless. My internal stress has completely decreased as I become more aware of the remarkable beauty that surrounds me.

I am almost to the halfway marker, which will be the end of the month. I still have so much to say and explore. To take a breath, sit back, and write each day has become the soul of my existence. To still produce images, searching for the core of my inner self becomes a reward beyond my greatest expectations. The barriers of human discrimination are fading into oblivion, where it becomes an examination of the naked self without judgment. Thank you for becoming a part of and following my project.

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