Category: Captain’s Log

I’m a dog guy. It’s no secret. I’ve had seven dogs as a part of my family, and I love my parent’s dog like he is mine, though he loves them probably more than he loves me. He’s a rascal, but I’d take him in a heartbeat.

The thing is, however, I’ve never been around for any of those dog’s end of life. The first dog was a collie when I was very young that I barely remember, and who we didn’t have long.

Then there was Buck, my beloved black lab when I was a kid. Buck was a great dog who was discontent in our small yard. He used to climb the backyard chain link fence to play with Chief, the dog in the yard adjacent to ours. My parents feared he would climb a different fence and get hit by a car or run away, so we surrendered him to a family that lived a ways away on a large plot of land. We visited Buck a few times after that, until one day he went hunting and never came back. Either he got snake bit or was picked up by another person, but we never saw him again.

Following Buck, our family got Lad, a neurotic sheltie who was a good dog, but he wasn’t great with kids. We surrendered him when our family moved out of state, which was good for Lad, but sad for us. In between we tried to adopt a lab puppy, but I don’t remember him lasting too long before we gave him back.

There was a few years where I didn’t have a dog around, and then I was studying at university, but as soon as I could, I adopted a little papillon who was so sassy I named her Cordy after the Buffy the Vampire Slayer character Cordelia Chase. If you know, you know. Anyway, only a few years after adopting Cordy, I had to re-home her as I moved to Texas and wouldn’t be able to have her with me where I was living. This is when I really bonded with my parent’s little shitzu-mutt Rufus. He and I are great friends.

When I married a few years later, my wife came with two dogs: Duncan and Cassie. Duncan is a super dumb beagle mix, who nonetheless is sweet and gentle. Cassie is a spitfire of a miniature poodle with a gimpy leg. She is super cute, and knows it. Recently we took Duncan and Cassie to the vet for their annual check up.

Both dogs passed their routine checks with flying colors until the vet listened to Cassie’s heart. The vet came into the exam room with Cassie and asked us if we noticed any change in her behavior. We hadn’t seen anything alarming, but that’s when the vet said she had heard a little heart murmur during the examination. Without more advanced tests, it is hard to know exactly what it going on. The diagnosis is that Cassie has a deformed, or deforming, heart valve. The end result of that will be congestive heart failure. Apparently it is a common development for small dogs, but it hit my wife and I pretty hard. Duncan and Cassie are both senior dogs at this point, but they aren’t nearly where they are as lived as they can be, and we certainly aren’t ready for either of them to leave us just yet.

There are a few things we can do for Cassie. The first step would be some imaging, either an X-ray (not very effective) or an echocardiogram (best). Both options are pricey. Then, there is medication which will delay the inevitable and help Cassie’s be more comfortable as the degradation progresses. Medication is also expensive. For a human, we could do heart surgery and replace the defective valves or address the underlying trouble, but we aren’t there with dogs, and the cost wouldn’t be approachable.

I do not want my Cassie to suffer, neither do I have the funding to pay for expensive studies and medications. To be clear, she has plenty of energy at the moment, and whatever is going on with her little heart is in the very early stages at this point. But it won’t stay there. So what to do? There is the thought that Cassie is just a dog, and as much as we anthropomorphize her, she isn’t human, but that doesn’t quite match how my wife and I feel about her, and how much a part of our family she truly is. But, we can’t really do much for her. Certainly, when her condition advances enough that she is in pain we won’t let her live that way, but what do we do in the interstitial time?

I don’t have answers to these questions. Right now I am trying to process my early grief and face the reality that however much time Cassie has left, it isn’t going to be that long compared to my lifespan. I will have to say goodbye to her, either sooner or later. None of us, canis or sapiens, are guaranteed the next day, and it is tragic that we are with dogs (usually) during their whole lives but that is such a short chapter in our stories.

I hope when the time comes, whenever that is, I will know what path to take and how best to care for her. However, for now, our vet told us that we don’t have to take immediate action, and that we are to monitor Cassie’s symptoms and energy level. In the next few months we will determine whether or not to get the echo, and what to do about meds. Whatever happens, we will face it as a family.

I love my Cassie girl. I don’t want to say good-bye to her.

I mentioned last time out that I want to make some changes to my routines.

I want less phone time. I’ve noticed that large swaths of my time are taken up these days with endless, mindless viewing of my social media apps. Only one is really a net positive, where I have burgeoning relationships, and I feel it adds to my life in a meaningful way. The rest are, at best, neutral. I haven’t used Twitter/X for some time now, and while cutting that out of my life was a huge positive, I can’t bring myself to quit the others, at least, not yet. In all, I don’t think I need to, but I certainly could do with less.

Over the past couple weeks, I have been trying to be mindful of when I most often am on my phone mindlessly scrolling. Usually it comes in three places: the bathroom, during commercial breaks in a baseball game, and during the day when I don’t particularly have anything specific to do.

I think I have cracked at least one problem, leading to a solution, and I am almost to another. The third is a bit more difficult, for reasons I’ll mention when I get there.

First: the bathroom. This one seems easy to me, and I’ll implement the solution starting today. I, like almost everyone with a smartphone I assume, take my phone into the bathroom with me. Growing up, smartphones didn’t exist, so I couldn’t do that, and instead took a paperback with me or read my mother’s old Reader’s Digests. I don’t know why it took me so long to think of this, but I will simply ban my phone from the bathroom. I will leave a paperback in the bathroom (so I don’t forget, it would be so sad to be bored in there!) and this may even kickstart my reading habit again. Wouldn’t that be nice? But seriously, if I can’t survive without my phone the few minutes the few times a day I am stuck in the bathroom, I’ve got more of a problem than I imagine.

Second: baseball games. Baseball season lasts from late February through November, and that is a long stretch where I watch at least part of a game almost every day (it used to be more, but these days I can barely focus on one game a day). Anyway, I get distracted every half inning because of the commercial break. This annoying few minutes comes and goes all game, and I mute the commercials as they are repetitive and irritating. I want something to do, as staring at a silent TV of images I don’t care about is boring. I tend to grab my phone and check each app in turn, mostly not even engaging or seeing what is there. After two innings, this really gets pointless as, unless something is breaking, there aren’t updates on social media that frequently. Not only am I zombiescrolling, but I’m not even seeing anything new. What am I even doing?

My solution? Have a project to work on throughout the game. Right now it is scanning photos for my mum. She has albums and shoeboxes full of old photos, and scanning them in doesn’t take much mental energy. Therefore I can work during the commercials, and often during the innings as well until the action heats up, and put down the phone. This allows me to make positive progress on something I want to do, and take in a ballgame at the same time. Win-win.

Third: in the down times. Here is where I still don’t have a direct solution. Part of the struggle is my overall inability to focus/concentrate and my lack of pep. I have tons of things I want to do, and many projects to work on, but mostly in the mid-afternoon and mid-evening I get to a point where I am semi-tired feeling, but don’t want to or can’t sleep, but also don’t have the gumption to do anything. Doomscrolling enters stage left and takes over the hours. Literally, hours. I don’t feel better because of it, usually feeling more restless even, and again, it isn’t like I am reading something new for a few hours because there aren’t even updates that often.

I am trying to get to the heart of why I doomscroll. Part of it may be a fear of missing out, a baked-in feeling of missing things that are being posted, but I think that is more or less the algorithm messing with my mind after a decade or so of being trained by it. Breaking the habit of doomscrolling may help me to see that I can check in once or twice a day (or less) and catch up with anything I’ve genuinely missed and not have that need as much. Part of it may also be the genuine connection to the few people I interact with online, and not wanting to neglect that. Again, I don’t have to be online constantly to do that. Boredom may also be a factor here, though, as I said, it is less that than an inability to focus. Either way, I don’t like being idle, and doomscrolling has the illusion of busyness. Breaking the habit will also break the illusion, and could lead to me actually being bored enough to get inspired to do something else.

A possible solution here is limits. Allowing myself a total amount of time to be on social media, and then that’s it for the day might be a great way to set limits for myself. I think that may be possible directly from iOS. If not I might simply need to exercise some self-discipline. Either way: possible solution! I might need some medical intervention here if my inability to focus or have energy has a physical or mental solution. That might take talking to my doctor or re-engaging with a therapist, but those are steps I am willing to take. I want to be healthy, and I can see that doomscrolling is not healthy.

Lastly, there is my morning routine outside of the bathroom. For some reason lately (last couple weeks) I’ve been waking up earlier than I would prefer and don’t have anything specific to do before I actually need to get ready for the day. Again, the bright allure of my smartphone screen tends to suck me in. I also want to put it away during this time. I mentioned this before, but I think I want to start a practice of meditation/mindfulness, coupled with reading time (a different thing than my bathroom reading – less novel and more nonfiction or poetry) and writing time (less blog and more poetry or prose). Not only would I probably feel more productive, but most likely more creative, too.

If I can manage to be at all successful with all this, I think certain aspects of my mental health and overall feeling of well-being will improve. I am excited to make the experiment. I remind myself that it isn’t about being perfect, or having an unbroken streak, but it is about being consistently intentional. Looking at my phone isn’t a moral failing, or a sign of some sort of contrived addiction, merely a natural part of living in this future of the 20th century. But I have noticed, for me, that it isn’t something I want to continue, and so I am putting this out into cyberspace as a way to mark the change I want to make. This feels like a hard thing to do, but as my sister frequently tells her daughters: “we can do hard things”. I can do hard things!

I’ve got me a week and a half of working from home, and generally relaxed time. My boss is out of town, I having dropped him off at the airport for a work trip, and there being no reason for me to be at the office as a result. I’ll have work to do, for sure, but it will be intermittent at best, and here and there. Check an email, write an email, do-a-thing kind of shuffle.

Perfect time for me to hustle and get things accomplished. I wrote about all I want to do in the post previous to this one. I even bought me two new books yesterday that arrived today, in case I really get ambitious with the reading. Both have been on my list for a long time: The Soul of an Octopus and The Odyssey of Star Wars. More on them later if I get around to reading them. I’ve come to understand that I am not piling books up for no reason, I am, in fact, building a library, a trust, for the future. I can look into the collection of words on a whim whenever I want to. Hard to do if you don’t have the collection to begin with.

I’ve made right by already re-arranging the living room, and am considering decor for the recently excavated fireplace and mantle. The mantle still has a few things I set there when we moved in, and I want to make sure that’s what I want to live there more or less permanently. Speaking of permanence, I can’t wait for the holidays and decorating this year! I didn’t have the opportunity last year on account of my wife and me moving and not being somewhere, well, permanent, but that shouldn’t be the case this year. This year it is going to be autumn, and then Yuletide, decorations for quite a while.

Anyway, between then and now, we’ve got summer and it’s the perfect time to explore what can be.

Into the plans the monkey wrench has been thrown, and in addition to all else, I am thinking about starting a morning routine for before my morning routine. I explain thusly: I have been waking up earlier than I plan to lately, and generally spend time scrolling on my phone. It ain’t exactly a good habit, and I’ve been considering replacing it with some healthy habits. What habits? Perhaps a meditation practice, writing, reading: being mindful. I usually have about an hour, and I think that would be perfect for a few minutes meditating, twenty minutes reading, and twenty minutes writing. It don’t sound like much, but it would be a start. Timers would help, but it is quiet while my wife and dogs sleep in, with generally just the bird song out the window and the gentle whirring of the ceiling fan o’erhead. I wouldn’t constrain myself to needing to do this every morning, at least to start, but only those days when I wake up early.

I’ve been thinking again about a podcast. Maybe it’s because I’ve been listening to podcasts again as I build and sort LEGO, but I am continually drawn to the art form. I tried producing a podcast back in the good old pandemic days, but it never got off the runway. I think what I need is a partner-in-mics, someone to talk to, rather than me rambling away like so much chattering. I want to explore themes of family, memory, and life in many facets, and that is best done with someone else. Hard to be introspective when I’ve thought all these thoughts before, without the welcome intrusion of another’s ideas and perspectives. I even have a few co-hosts in mind that I may approach, but for now it’s all “mums-the-word” and working on building it out before I put it out there for consideration.

In all, the summer is going well. I’m positive, despite the utter horror show that is *gestures at everything*, and that’s not nothing. I still can spiral down into the darkness below, but that isn’t forever, and is becoming less and less intense. I pull out of the tailspin almost as quickly as I dip into it, and that is a major win for my psyche. I’ve long wrestled with depression and anxiety, and it feels great to be be-boppin’ along for the most part. I raise a glass of sugar-free soda to the summer ahead, and look forward to what comes next.

I’ve been feeling better.

Part of it has been my poor diet, which I’ve tried to turn around in recent weeks. My mastication habits are almost entirely in my domain to handle, and since starting to handle them, I’ve felt much better. It is amazing to me how something as simple-seeming as food choice can affect an entire life, but it has. For over a year, I haven’t been sleeping well and I’ve been feeling worse: I’ve been lethargic, listless, and weary.

Look, it is hard to engage in doing something when you don’t feel like anything. Now I feel like All-the-Things! I am thankful. I thought that the way to my better self was in denying-self-denial. Articulating that now, I realize how dumb that actually is. I was eating whatever I wanted, more or less whenever I wanted to. Not only was it literally contributing to my sooner end, mentally it was fogging me in.

I hate feeling that way: all fogged up and tired. The past two weeks or more have been a revelation. Mentally I am clearer, physically I am peppier, and holistically, I am better. Even tonight, I made a poor choice, and already I am feeling the effects and I don’t like it. I am more resolved than ever to do different.

I try not to make moralizations out of food choices. I don’t believe cravings are my fault. Sometimes food does look too good to resist, like tonight. But often, choices are in my control and control them I must. The only way out is through, as the old saying goes. I make choices when I am able, and let the rest lay as it falls.

For too long I was conflating the sweet allure of confections with the way to feel good. I am a feelings eater, or was (as it turns out, that is changing quickly). I thought the way to feeling better was to eat what I wanted to eat when I wanted to eat it. It ain’t. (Which may be why my feelings are evaporating from my mouth.) I am happy to finally have a solution. It isn’t the solution I thought, but it’ll more than do.

It isn’t easy, of course, not having that cake, or drinking that soda, or even having a late night snack, but feeling how I feel makes forgoing the sweet choice a more desirable option. “Nothing tastes as good as this feels” is another old saying, and while things really do sometimes taste amazingly, this feels pretty good as well.

I am excited to see what comes next. I have had more gumption, more energy, and more ability to choose to do things. Even now, as I’m writing, which I haven’t done much of lately, I rejoice to have the zest to do so. I’ve written many times before about all the creative excursions I’ve wanted to take, and couldn’t, and now I feel as if I can finally walk those trails and smile in the dappled sunlight.