Larry: “This can be clearly seen in your declaration in 1:22 where suddenly you bring up the matter of a choice that is open to you, and declare that you are not making known what your decision will be. Was it because you didn’t want to close your options by stating what your choice would be?”
Paul: “That’s right. I didn’t want to close off any of my options.”
Larry: “Fair enough. Now we know the Greek word for choose has to do with what one prefers as being the basis of a selection. However, Paul, you had a serious decision to make, and if we go back to discover what this might be all about we find nothing that fits into the picture. You have been speaking of life and death in the previous passages, but it can’t be that in these two great issues you had any choice - right?”
Paul: “Right, not regarding the issues of life and death.”
Paul was in prison. He did not know what the outcome of his case would be. Because of your prior commitment to the monochotomous nature of man you have your moderator assume a hyper-literal reading of 'choosing' that infers an actual offer from God to Paul; an actual decision to be made by Paul on the offer, based solely on a (purported) statement by Paul that he's not telling what his (purported) actual decision is. You do not have your 'moderator' inform the 'viewer' of alternate renderings that are equally acceptable, which is, I think, a little misleading. The part about Paul's "declaration" can just as well be translated either that he is not going to make it known, OR simply that he doesn't know.
NAS - "But if I am to live on in the flesh, this will mean fruitful labor for me; and I do not know which to choose."
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I understand the passage as Paul reasoning with himself, and simply stating what he would prefer if he had the choice, as, "If I had my druthers...,", etc. However, it doesn't really make any difference whether Paul is just saying he doesn't know, or if he is saying that he is not declaring what he chooses or would choose. Since there is nothing at all in the passage that speaks of God actually giving him a choice, it is certainly plausible or reasonable to understand it as Paul ruminating out loud, as it were, about what he would prefer.
You remember that Enoch departed to be with God, and Enoch didn’t experience death. Also, Elijah got caught up in a whirlwind and went up to heaven without dying. So, I was talking about becoming number four to depart while alive. How did that get hijacked?”
Larry: “Number four?”
Paul: “Yes, don’t forget the Lord Jesus Christ ascended into heaven after He became alive again. He didn’t die once more and then go to heaven, did He?”
If I had to describe your hermeneutic rule here I would call it "imagination run riot".
Enoch is not mentioned anywhere in the passage.
Elijah is not mentioned anywhere in the passage.
Christ's ascension into heaven is not mentioned in the passage.
Although you use the word departure 3 or 4 times to describe the foregoing events, that word "departure" is not used in Scripture of their being taken or translated into heaven, and in fact, it is used only one other time in the N.T.:
"Be like men who are waiting for their master when he returns from the wedding feast, so that they may immediately open the door to him when he comes and knocks.
Luke 12:36
- To depart (eiv to analusai).
- Purpose clause, eiv to and the aorist active infinitive analusai, old compound verb, to unloose (as threads), to break up, to return (Luke 12:36, only other N.T. example), to break up camp (Polybius), to weigh anchor and put out to sea, to depart (often in old Greek and papyri). Cf. kataluw in 2 Corinthians 5:1 for tearing down the tent.
Strong's Number: 360 a)nalu/w Original Word Word Origin a)nalu/w from (303) and (3089) Transliterated Word Phonetic Spelling Analuo an-al-oo'-o 
Parts of Speech TDNT Verb 4:337,543 Definition - to unloose, undo again
- to depart, break up, to depart from life, to return
Translated Words KJV (2) - depart, 1; return, 1; NAS (2) - depart, 1; returns, 1;
These three departures of living men are sufficient to show that the words ‘to depart and be with Christ’ do not mean death...
From nothing but silence and zero textual support from the passage itself, and a sprinkle of rank speculation, you make the fantastic leap of logic that because something is logically possible (God could take Paul in the twinkling of an eye to Heaven) it is necessarily so that this is what Paul was referring to by "depart". From that non-sequiter you then conclude that there is sufficient reason to exclude any other meaning, particularly the meaning of death, which Paul refers to in the immediately preceding verse.
As I've said before, major doctrines of historic Christianity do not hinge on a single passage. So it is with this one. Even if you were right about Paul abruptly introducing an unstated third alternative (in a passage that says "both" or "two") sandwiched in between the apparent parallelism of dying and "living in the flesh" in verses immediately preceding and immediately following the verse in question, the historic doctrine of the Church is not effected either way because of the many other passages that can be adduced in its favor. However, since you CANNOT (or should I say WILL NOT) allow death to mean departure and immediate presence with Christ (for to do so would completely destroy your doctrine of death as nothingness) you are forced to resort to imaginative speculation as if it were necessary and required under laws of interpretation.
That's my take on your exegesis of this verse, anyway.
Cordially,