Today, a colleague sent me a text message, saying: There must be more to life than work." It was 9.40pm when I received this text, and the poor girl was still in the office.

This is day 5 after my third hit of FEC and it was harder to take than the earlier two. I am really tired and literally need to simply just lie down for an hour or so in the afternoons. I am also nursing a very sore throat, and more than the first couple of times, am feeling alternatively chilled and feverish. I quietly dread the rest of the chemo. I hate not being 100%.

While I lie down, I run through in my mind the deadlines I have outstanding, and how I can manage them most efficiently, even as I get the rest I need.

So, I muse to myself: there must be more to life...

Unfortunately, just what that 'more' is, remains, well, undiscovered, unrealised. I do not have kids, so no joy there. No life partner, either - that's one window that remains closed. My family - certainly, but they have all their own 'more to life' elements, and I am not top of their list. Ditto my friends.

So, here I am, at a certain age, still wondering what I have done with my life, and what my legacy will be. What is the 'more' we should all have, apart from working to put food on the table, pay the mortgage, and the taxes and fund our retirement. Incidentally, looking at the various trends, unless you strike it rich, or were a very canny investor in your youth, most of us will suffer a reduction in living standards during our retirement. Would all those years of corporate strife, politicking, brown-nosing (yeah, don't kid yourself, you would have done it a time or two...) have been worth it?

(The most engaged I feel is when I am talking about my work with people, planning programs etc... is that ALL there is?)

Today, even as I fight a sore throat, fatigue, chills, I cannot help but think about deadlines. In the words of a pop philospher...'What's it all about...".

At times like these, I feel a distinctly socialist rumblde, and think that we might have been better off when we all owned our own veggie patches and chickens, spent our days fishing, evenings knitting and weaving, and did not have to answer to the 'man'.

Today, all these are quaint 'hobbies'. Personally, I do not feel the need to begin catching, much less plucking (notice I prefer not to mention the bloodier aspects of chicken harvest) the darned birds. It's just the simplicity of the life that beckons, I guess.

It seems to me that big business has turned us into automatons, like so many factory workers. Now, apart from those who sit one below Board level, we are simply variations of the many factory hands and machines that sprouted during the industrial revolution.

Has our quality of life really improved? More money to spend, sure, but also, more hours spent making it, only to have banks and taxes take it away. Our kids and family structures are falling apart, and it really says something when one is confronted with one's own mortality and yet, we find that our entire self-identity is wrapped up in our jobs.

What about our humanity? I fear that the Career might have taken that away from us. Something certainly needs redefining. The idea of a 'career', or perhaps what it means to have lived, to have been human? It would be sad if we can only equate our time here with 'building a career', 'working for the man', 'putting the kids through school...'.

So, again, I ask...'What's it all about...?".