Intentionality

Hello, Friends. 

I'm going to talk about something that I struggle with a lot, and that's being intentional about how I spend my time. Because I've spent so much of my life with the perception that things just happen to me instead of feeling like I have a say (and let me tell you, I've done some MAJOR work on this over the past 10 or so years, but I still definitely have a long way to go), intentionality ain't my strong suit. I was doing well for about a month recently by spending my time putting self-care at the forefront. Yoga was the way I did this, and it felt great, and I was able to generalize it to other areas of my life with some majorly positive results.

Then I found out about the genetic disorder and was totally overwhelmed by the amount of stuff I'd have to do in the beginning to manage it.

Then a family member had major surgery, which was related to this genetic disorder.

Then like 6 of my clients went into crisis and had to start being seen multiple times a week temporarily.

Then I made some Big Professional Decisions That I Can't Talk About Yet That Also Don't Feel Like They're Real Yet.

Then I realized that my income is going to be cut in more than half for the next two months because I won't be teaching and started unabashedly freaking out even though I know intellectually that we're going to be fine because we've been saving for this time knowing that it's coming.

Then my dog died and had to take the entire week off of work not just for the holiday, but also because I was in no mental place whatsoever to handle the grief AND having to be present with my clients.

Then I had a thyroid biopsy and I have a huge gross bruise on my neck. Thank goodness for scarves, let me tell you.

Yeah, November was a BITCH. Work-wise, every year it is. I'm not sure if it's the holidays, or if people are finally in a groove for the school year and that's when all of the difficulties rear their ugly heads, but regardless of the reason, I was in it. What that means when I'm in it is that I get knocked out of sync with my self-care. I stopped going to yoga. I stopped eating well. I just...stopped. The holidays are also hard for me for a multitude of reasons, and that's not a small piece of the puzzle, especially this year.

This happens from time to time and it costs me a great deal in terms of my mental health in particular. So, I realized what was happening and then I decided to do something different. I got in touch with my therapist to get back into therapy (I always tick up this time of year anyway because holidays), and made a few other intentional decisions, and then I sat down a few minutes ago and looked at the schedule of my yoga studio. I put myself in for five classes this week knowing that the excuses I was making not to go were no longer valid. Not going was keeping me from meeting myself where I was, and it didn't allow me any more space. It wasn't causing me any less stress not to go - if anything, it was making it worse. Regardless of all of that, I was coming up with excuse after excuse after excuse not to go. That all stopped today.

I don't know where it happened (I suspect it started happening before yesterday, but that's when I started noticing it), but something along the way just just...clicked. I was having a really hard time. Like, really hard. Our best friend invited us to go to the park with her son and Ruby and I just...couldn't do it. So I let Rob and Ruby go and sat by myself unraveling a blanket, making a giant yarn ball, and crying. Weird, maybe. But it was what I needed to do for myself at that point in time. I'm doing better today, but I know that things like this are going to happen over the next few weeks. There have been MAJOR ups and downs this week, which will get better with time, and I'm sure are not made any easier by the fact that my thyroid medication changed and it's wreaking all kinds of havoc, to the point where I might call my doctor. I want to ride it out and see if it gets any better and give it a little time and see if my body is able to even out, but we'll see.

Sigh. What I've come to realize (and this was a long time ago that the realization came, I just am not consistent about doing anything about it) is that the chaos in my life will be no less unless I make it so. Sometimes I just have to get out of my own way - if I want less chaos, that's what's got to happen. There's literally no other way than making the choice and realizing that not making the choice is also making a choice.

This post deserves a hashtag. Here it is.

#shitisaytomyclientsallthetimebutdonteverfollowmyself

An Ode to my Beloved Pet

Today, we had to put Miles, the first dog I've ever owned, to sleep. His decline started on Thursday - he was sluggish, lethargic, and struggled to eat. "Maybe he ate something bad while countersurfing", we thought, and felt affirmed on Friday when he appeared to rebound, waking up and immediately wanting to play with Ruby. He was eating, he was doing great. Then Saturday, same thing. I breathed a sigh of relief on Saturday, thinking we were out of the woods.

We very much weren't, I realized, on Saturday night. We went out to do some Christmas shopping and when we returned, he was again sluggish. He had to be coaxed to eat. He was Officially Not Himself. "Let's give it the night," I told myself. "He'll wake up in the morning better just like he did on Friday. This is a passing thing." I think we were both trying to convince ourselves that this was not him telling us that it was time.

He woke me up around 2am, pacing and whining quietly. He tried to lay down, but was up again after a little while, would pace and drink water, rinse and repeat for about 6 hours. Ruby had training class this morning, so Rob agreed to take him to the emergency vet and I would meet them there after class was done. Before he left, we had to have the conversation: If it was really bad or it was going to take something really invasive and drastic to make it ok, would we take those measures? For both of us, it was a resounding no - his quality of life forever being our North Star, we couldn't do that to him. To have tried to prolong his life at the expense of his quality of life would have only benefited us, and after all he has given us in his 9 and a half years, we just couldn't do that. If it was something small that could easily be fixed, absolutely. Fix it. Get him back to his old self. I think at this point we both knew in our hearts and our guts that this wasn't the case. I checked in after we finished and they still hadn't taken him in, but by the time I got there they had and they had an answer: Massive internal bleeding probably from cancer somewhere in his abdomen, or potentially a ruptured spleen. Either way, there was nothing we could do, so we had to let him go.

We got the news and I just...sobbed. And sobbed. I wondered how this could have happened because he got two pristine bloodworks - one in July and one before his dental surgery in September. And then we learned that only one of us could go in with him. I sobbed harder. Rob and I talked about it, and I offered for him to go in - he was Miles' Person, but Rob, ever the compassionate soul that he is, let me go in. We brought him for a cheeseburger, which I ordered through tears at the McDonald's drive through, and I wondered to myself how many people they had done this for. He he didn't eat it, which I expected. Then we brought him back to the vet, Rob said his final goodbyes, we brought him in, I petted him and whispered in his ear that he was the best boy, kissed him one last time between the eyes, which was my favorite place to kiss him, and then let him go.

I don't think I've ever been more anxious about an animal as I was Miles' entire life. I mean, literally from the moment I picked him up from work (I was working at the SPCA at the time) on that March 31 in 2011. We were kindred spirits, he and I, because he was so anxious that we had literally JUST had an appointment with our vet about putting him on drugs like a week ago. A week ago yesterday. The prozac is waiting at CVS right now to be picked up, even. He bonded with both of us right away, but because I was around him more (because I could bring him to work with me at the time), he bonded with me quickly. He bonded with Rob more slowly, but theirs was a love that was so deep and plentiful that I just loved watching them together. I often found myself envious of their bond.

I'm not sure if it was the stigma of owning a pit bull that I had unconsciously internalized (though he never had a single bite in his history ever - but he was a Big Dude, and I remember when he was younger but full-sized, there would be times that I would walk him and because he was so reactive, people would cross the street to the other side, and to top it off, he was a smiler - when he got excited, he'd show you his teeth, which tended to scare people until we explained), or if it was just First Dog Jitters, or a combination of the two. But I was constantly wracked with anxiety the entire nine and a half years that we had him in our lives. My worst nightmare, today, was on my mind all the time, especially in the last year or two. It was with me when he had kennel cough and then a secondary infection, during which he had a chronic cough for a year and a half and there were times I was sure we were going to lose him. It was with me whenever we passed another person or a dog and he got reactive. It was with me when he got into my Jolly Joes when he was six months old. It was with me whenever we had visitors. It was always with me. 100% of the time. There was no reason for it and if I had been able to let it go, the quality of relationship that I had with him may have been better, but the love we had and still have for this dog is a long-burning one. I can say with 100% certainty that we did the right thing today. I can say with 100% certainty that we did our best to make sure that we spoiled him rotten, as he deserved. And he responded in kind by making me feel more loved by a dog than I could have ever dreamed of. What could we do in that unconditional, unabashed, and constantly present love we were being shown? We did everything we could to do right by Miles and show him the love that he has so unconditionally shown us, and that included listening to him when he told us it was time.

Do I grieve? Of course I do. But I'm also filled with this overwhelming sense of relief that we did the right thing and that we gave him the best life possible. I don't know what to do now that he's gone, and there's this sadness and grief that has descended on our house that will dissipate eventually, but his absence is BIG. His absence is felt not only in the not barking at every passer by, or when my neighbors across the street deign to get in their car and drive away or at the mailman or the UPS guy, but also because that anxiety I felt was a huge weight that I now no longer carry, I don't know what to do with that not being present anymore. I'll miss his butt wiggles and him greeting me at the door. I'll miss him licking my feet when I do yoga. I'll miss him wrestling with Ruby and showing her how to dog. I'll miss him just coming and chilling out in my office when we're both in the middle of a work day and my clients cooing at him because he was just SO DAMN CUTE with that FACE. I'll miss his tap dancing whenever he sees us. I'll miss coming downstairs from a session or five in a row to him just chilling on the couch. I'll miss how excited he'd get when we brought out the toys or treats. There are about 15,000 other things that I will carry with me as a result of having him with us, and I have so much gratitude for each of those things that I might burst. But I also know that having those little things with me comes at a cost. Love this big comes with grief in equal measure, so I'm in for it over the next few days and weeks as I adjust to his absence. I've only sobbed randomly once, and so I have hope that this weight will get easier to carry, having no expectation that it's ever going to go away, nor do I want it to because it means that I loved him, and I wouldn't trade that for anything.

Miles, you're the best first dog a girl could ask for. Thank you, endlessly, for the lessons and the love.

01/31/2011-11/22/2020
(He's also pretending to sleep in this picture which he did VERY
often whenever I tried to take pictures of him.
He absolutely hated having his picture taken.)

This is a bonkers idea. Is this a bonkers idea? This is a bonkers idea.

 Let me tell you what happens when I go off of my thyroid meds because I am absolutely terrible at two things:

1. Taking my medications/supplements regularly

2. Refilling my medications when they run out

I ran out of thyroid meds a week and a half ago. If there is anything that I should take, it's this medication. I've had normal numbers until about a year and a half ago, but various doctors over the years have been like, "you should take it." and then, "Nah, you don't need it. You can stop." and then, "You should take it." and then my naturopath was like "You should definitely take it AND here's a higher dosage."

The difference that I felt after I started taking that higher dosage was nothing short of remarkable. I was less anxious (and that's fun, because depression and anxiety are symptoms of hypothyroid), I slept better, I woke up more refreshed, and I had a clearer head, literally overnight. I was rolling along, taking it (basically) consistently, but having hiccups here and there, and really struggling to take it whenever my routine got thrown off, like on the weekends. That's one that will be a perpetual struggle, I think.

But, running out of medications. Right. So, I ran out a week and a half ago. "No big deal," I thought. "I'll just pick it up in the next few days."

And then I didn't. And then I didn't again. And then I started to feel sluggish. And angry. And just...heated. The only way that I can describe it was that it felt like someone had turned up my internal stove (except I was cold all the time) and I was just...not great. I was foggy, I was anxious, and I just was a pretty hard person to be around. I had been feeling like I'd been fighting something for a few days, and lo and behold, it was my thyroid. AND YET, I sat there the WHOLE DAMN TIME wondering why I was feeling that way, and pinning it to my Election Week Diet, which was terrible. I ate macaroni and cheese four nights in a row, that kind of terrible. I figured if I could fix my diet and get myself back to a place of balance in what I was putting in my body, then I'd feel better.

And then I didn't. At that same time, I also realized that I hadn't taken my thyroid meds in a week and a half. I just hadn't made the connection. Unbelievable. (I ALSO TRIED AND FAILED YOGA TWICE THIS WEEK AND COULDN'T FRIGGING FIGURE OUT WHY.)

I hopped back on the thyroid medication train this morning and I feel a world of difference already. I'm clearer, I'm feeling better, and I have energy to move around and stuff instead of just shuffling myself from one thing to the next, hoping that I'd be able to go to bed soon, please, or maybe I'll just nap in my work chair because I'm so overwhelmed that I feel like that's all I can do.

Right. On to my bonkers idea.

I was feeling a lot of internal noise all of a sudden earlier today and thought, "Oh good, my body is finally awaking from this damn stupor." On a break I had been reading Ask A Manager, one of my favorite blogs. The advice she gives is spot on, and I just love reading it.

And then my brain just...barfed something out that totally stunned me. I literally felt like I had been jolted by something.

Write an advice column about ethics for counselors. Start a blog, advertise to my social media groups, have people write in with their hypothetical counseling ethical conundrums, and take it from there, with eventually monetizing it. I need to tease it out from a liability standpoint to make sure I don't get sued, and I need to make sure that I cover myself as entirely as possible, but I think I'm going to do it.

I have some other irons in the fire that I'm trying to work out in the coming weeks, but that's what happens when your thyroid counts normalize; you can actually think and plan and, you know, do things you like because you actually like them and not because you feel like you have to or that it's a chore because everything's a chore when you don't feel well for reasons you can't pinpoint.

And go to your thyroid doctor, even if you know that it will probably end in a biopsy because you're three years late for the one you have to get every 10 years. Oops.