A dancer dances

One of the biggest questions will be when or whether I go back to work. When I'm feeling good, as I am much of the time between chemo treatments, it seems not only like I ought to be working but like I'm perpetrating some kind of fraud by not. And then there's the other roughly half of the time -- the week I'm taking my chemo and usually about a week afterward -- when I feel really lousy and thank my stars I don't have to get up and go to the office. I'm on the tail end of one of those two-week periods now, and I've been too zoned to get any work done even if I wanted to be working, which I haven't.

Even so, I'm having lunch with my boss McCumber on Thursday to discuss the possibility of going back. This stems from a note I sent him about three weeks ago, when I was feeling energized and kept seeing things in the paper that made me want to help. I titled my note “A dancer dances” after a song in A Chorus Line, which Michelle and I had just seen on Broadway, and I explained to David that I was experiencing the journalistic equivalent of that sentiment: an editor edits.

He got all excited and started talking about how great it would be if I came back, how the paper owes me (it doesn't) and how I'm part of the P-I family. Cool and everything, but I had to remind him that it's a tough time for newspapers, including ours. I told him and meant it that I wouldn't be surprised or resentful if, despite his desire and even Roger's (the publisher) desire to have me back, that the truth turned out to be that my budget line had been reabsorbed and there is no job to come back to. He seemed dismissive of that scenario, but I still believe it's no better than 50-50 that there's a job waiting for me. That may be high.

David was planning to talk with Roger about all this before our lunch on Thursday. I guess we'll find out soon enough.