Full disclosure: I make vision boards. Every New Year's, I create a new one for the year to come. Every year, I make them visually pleasing, inspiring, and wonderful. Every year, set them as my laptop wallpaper, where I see them daily.
And every year, the stuff on them keeps coming true. Not always during that very year when they appear on the board, but usually within 18 months.
For example, in 2021, I had a picture of a moody office on the board, and a couple of months later, that view was my everyday reality.
In 2022, I had a photo of a bridge in Amsterdam there. I visited Amsterdam in April 2023.
In 2023, there was a country style overcoat and a dachshund. I got the coat in the spring this year. The dachshund puppy moved in with us this June.
That's a fairly long segue into the main topic, which is that I'm now a dog's human. This is the project that started on June 24th that I teased in this article. And boy, has being a dog's human made my life harder than it was before.
Every day is now structured to fit the puppy's eating and walking and pooping schedule.
I have to be available at specific times. I have to play with him outside for at least an hour every day.
I can't just ditch everything and go have a staycation - the puppy has to come along.
I can't travel abroad before he's old and civilized enough to behave in a dog hotel.
I can't just take a whole day for myself since he can't be alone for more than four hours at a time.
He doesn't always know how to behave in public.
He sometimes makes a huge mess with gastrointestinal issues.
And he has this pain-in-the-butt tendency to want to taste and chew everything he sees on the ground, including the gastrointestinal issues of other animals.
All this is to say that as per my old/new make-life-harder-again principle, I have started off superlatively.
In the first few weeks, he was so hungry for attention that I literally got nothing done. Now, thank God, he can keep himself adequately entertained for me to focus on some of my own stuff as well for a few minutes every day.
My own stuff, meaning, making my life harder, since getting a dog wasn't enough.
RK out.
