I know, I know! Since the advent of social media, we’ve been swamped with National Days and I’m pretty sure that National Dog Day (or Puppy Day or Rescue Day or I Love My Dog Day) happens several times a year.
And one part of me wants to resist falling for a trend or buying into the hype but another (very determined!) part of me says ‘Why not celebrate good things more often?’
Yes, I know that it is hard to celebrate things – even the very best things- every day.
And if you celebrate things every day, aren’t you just establishing a new normal and nothing is actually being celebrated?
Yeah, probably.
But maybe having multiple points in the year to celebrate important parts of your life is a good compromise between all of those things.
*****
With all of that wondering (overthinking? probably.) out of the way, I’m going to go ahead and celebrate National Dog Day today.
Even after 6 years, I still find myself somewhat surprised to have a dog.
It’s a good kind of surprise.
It’s delightful to have Khalee in my life, to take her for walks and to give her treats and to just have her company even though part of my brain is still astounded that she lives here.
You see, I have always been allergic to animals and while we had pets some of the time when I was growing up, my allergies kind of forced me to keep my distance.
I don’t think any of us realized that I could take an allergy pill daily. I only took them when my symptoms got really bad – they were a treatment, not a prevention – and as a result, while I loved our dog, Sox, and our guinea pigs and the like I didn’t get the same kind of close to them that other people got to their pets.
So, when my friends started getting pets for their kids – or when it was suggested that I get a pet for mine – I would comment that I couldn’t imagine having an animal living in my house.
Now, before you get all upstrapless about my tone there, I wasn’t judging them and I wasn’t saying dogs were bad. I was actually bewildered by the idea.
I liked dogs and cats but I didn’t understand them. I couldn’t get close to them (because: allergies) and so all I was imagining was having another creature to take care of and my brain just flatly refused to entertain the idea.
But once my ADHD meds were sorted and my kid’s therapist had recommended that we get a ‘tactile’ pet, I had a bit more capacity AND I had an extra reason to take on the responsibility of giving a dog a home.
This is a photo of Khalee from 2019 and I love how it looks like she is hoping I understood how important that secret she just told me was. Image description: a close-up photo of Khalee, a light-coloured, medium-sized dog, standing on a dark laminate floor with an orange wall in the background. She has her mouth slightly open and her eyes look serious.
In that post, I mention that I didn’t consider ‘dog person’ as part of my identity. I’m still not sure that it would occur to me to mention how I feel about dogs when having a casual conversation but I am a friend to dogs in a way I never was before and everypup recognizes me as a soft touch for a pat or a snack.
Khalee has branched out a bit since that post – she doesn’t follow every step I take anymore, unless I am in the kitchen or carrying a plate of food, of course.
She gets up waaaaaaaaaaaaaay too early and she sometimes needs to go out over and over and over and that can be annoying in the moment but she also keeps me company when I’m working on something challenging and she gives me a reason to go out for a (often very slow) walk and she’s happy to see me when I come home (even if I have just been out in the driveway) and, well, she’s just great.
And appreciating her for her mere existence – she’s good because she’s good, not because of anything specific she does – has made it a lot easier to feel that way about creatures in general, including people.
A recent, sleepy photo of Khalee. Image description: a photo of Khalee, a medium-sized, light-haired dog resting with her head on her paws, facing the camera. Her face takes up most of the image and she looks gentle, relaxed, and sleepy.
So yeah, I’m up for celebrating National Dog Day.
If you are looking for some other ways to celebrate National Dog Day, check out this list on the National Dog Day website.
Khalee is DEFINITELY a Feminist. Image description: a photo of Khalee, a light-haired, medium-sized dog resting on my bed. She has her mouth open slightly and she is looking directly at the camera. Next to her is a rectangular pillow that says ‘Feminist’ in red cursive with a pink, yellow, and green rainbow behind it.
As a bonus, here are some photos of some of my other dog friends…I mean, my friend’s dogs…hmm, maybe I was right the first time.
This is my friend, Gal, she likes highway driving but she is not a fan of driving slowly. that’s why we don’t let her take the wheel. Image description: a photo from the passenger seat of a car with Gal, a husky, poking her head out from the backseat and resting her chin on the center console. You can see my left arm next to her head and my friend’s shoulder and a piece of her hair on the other side of Gal’s sweet face.Archie! My friend Archie likes to sleep on the back of your neck if you sit on his couch when you visit. He is a fan of treats – that’s something we have in common. Image description: a small black, white, and brown dog wearing a plaid bowtie sits upright on a brown couch. He has true puppydog eyes – round and bright and very likely to convince you to hand over a potato chip.Maisie and I are good friends, especially if I am willing to share my snacks, scratch her head, or hold her chew toy at chomping height. Image description: a large grey dog with fuzzy hair sits upright on a weathered patio. She has her tongue stuck out a little ways and her hair hangs over her eyes. You can see my friend’s arm as she reaches out to pat Maisie’s back, and you can see grass, flowers, and trees in the background. Reuben is a new friend of mine and he is VERY fuzzy and he was wondering if maybe I had a treat for him. (I did!) Image description: a tall, light brown, curly-haired dog is sitting upright on a tile kitchen floor next to a table with a flowered table cloth.Spritz (a.k.a. Spritzie) is a teeny brown chihuahua who liked being up in my arms until he very much did not and then I gently laid him down on the floor. Image description: a photo of me holding a teeny brown chihuahua in the crook of my left arm while I take a selfie with my right. I am wearing a beige sweater and I have my hair pulled back from my face with a black cloth band.
And just in case you want to know more about how helpful Khalee is, here are some of my posts that feature her:
I have been without a car for much of the past few weeks. I was not comfortable cycling for various reasons, so I pulled out my transit pass and started using the bus. My step count went way up.
This isn’t entirely surprising. I have to walk further than my driveway to get to the bus stop, and connecting buses and final destinations do not always align perfectly with bus stops.
It was rather fun to take the bus; definitely more social, and less pressure on me to navigate to where I was going. And because I’m cheap, I often walked to places that were relatively close because I didn’t want to pay $4.00.
Better health outcomes from using public transit isn’t news. OCTranspo has listed a bunch of studies here. This meta-analysis considered 27 studies, of which 9 reported on absolute measures of physical activity associated with public transport and further 18 papers reported on factors associated with physical activity as part of public transport use. A range of 8–33 additional minutes of walking was identified from this systematic search as being attributable to public transport use.
Of course, good integration of transit modes is what will encourage people to get out of their cars and use public and active transit, so this image from a study by UITP on exactly that issue seems perfect.
Pedestrians use a crosswalk while cyclists on a separated bike path wait for them to cross. There is a tram and another vehicle that may be a bus, and two large bike parking areas full of bikes. In the far background, you can see one car and possibly a truck.
Are you feeling it? Judging by the social media comments I find as I doomscroll, I’m pretty sure it’s not just me.
Other things are contributing too: trying to organize a big event at the other end of the province in a few weeks; navigating insurance after my car was hit while sitting in my driveway; insomnia brought on by all of the above…
I’m trying to use all my tricks: lists, reminders on my phone, the Pomodoro app. Aiming to do five things (or even one), no matter how small to break myself out of the frozen feeling. I even took my laptop to the pool so I could do paperwork while on my break.
Eventually I was able to do a thing, which led to a few more things, so hopefully I’m getting myself back on track. But I think this will be a long process because so much of what I am dealing with requires what some people call executive decision-making. My brain is too tired to brain right now.
Yesterday I had a profound revelation about keeping going. There was a drop-in student at my dance class. She didn’t know the work, but she clearly knew how to dance. She was an honest-to-goodness ballerina, or had been at some point in the not-too-distant past. The rest of us watched in awe.
After class, our teacher said something about her being there just to move her body and be part of the group. She wasn’t performing before a critical audience. She wasn’t setting a class and training students. She was just “there”.
Just being “there”. How lovely. I need to remember to move my body in ways that give me joy, and let go of all those things I’m trying to manage – if only for a few minutes.
A child in purple ballet gear and pink slippers relaxes (or sleeps?) on the floor. Photo is from Brilliant Dance.
So last week‘s Planuary post was very much about physical wellness- about how I’m going to add pushups and upper body yoga into my routine – and this week’s post is about mental wellness – how I am going to (re)implement a stress-reducing practice into my days.
Sidenote: I haven’t actually added the pushups and yoga into my day-to-day yet. Planuary is a deliberately slow process but I will let you know when and how I proceed with the pushup plan.
So my next part of Planuary is about reflection – reflective journaling to be precise.
This isn’t me, obviously. Their writing is tidy and their nail polish isn’t chipped. Image description: a person’s hands are shown writing in a coil-bound notebook. They are wearing a brown sweater and dark nail polish.
For over a year, I was doing long journal entries via voice dictation every day.
It was really useful for my brain and I found that processing everything aloud reduced my stress levels overall.
Then, I just kind of got out of the habit.
There were several reasons for that but the main one was tech-related.
I was using Google Docs for journaling but I use it for a lot of things and it got to be really annoying because it doesn’t have a good way to organize your files and my journal entries were popping up at times when I did not want to see them.
I tried switching to an app instead and while that was better for keeping my journal in one spot (and letting me choose when to see it instead of having it sprung on me), the app itself keeps crashing on my somewhat outdated phone. So, I would be chattering away to my journal and then discover that I hadn’t been recording for ages.
So I tried recording in Google Docs and then copying and pasting the entry into the other app but that made every journaling session a two-step process and my ADHD brain started protesting at the waste of time. (Yes, I know it was just a few seconds but sometimes my brain just won’t.)
Because of the ‘longer’ process, I started delaying my journaling time until later. (In this case, later is ‘the not now’ – a possibly fictional time in which the thing I am trying to do will be magically easier and hassle free. This is a common ADHD trap.)
And that turned into hardly journaling at all.
But I have been really missing the stress-reducing nature of the journaling process – especially when I can use voice dictation to process everything verbally.
So, I want to get back into the reflective journaling habit in a way that works with my brain instead of against it and here’s my plan for doing that:
Record into Google Docs every day for a week and then cut and paste into the app with good organization. Sure, there will temporarily be a single journaling document with up to a week’s worth of reflection in it but I think I can live with that. Also, my brain is fine with a ‘every Friday we cut and paste’ kind of task even though it objects to doing that daily.
Do my journaling as early in the day as possible. Journaling at night is never going to happen for me. I can do short entries but I don’t seem to get into the same rhythm at night and it doesn’t have the same stress-reducing effect. So, I’m going to turn on voice dictation for 10 minutes as soon as I can during the day.
Keep a list of questions to ask myself. I don’t often get stuck for a journaling topic but I want to be prepared, just in case.
Unlike the pushups, I can and will start this practice right away.
As I was considering why I feel drawn back to reflective journaling, I realized that, not only did it help me to reduce my stress levels overall, it also used to help get my brain into ‘time to start work’ mode and anything that helps me with work-related task initiation is good for my mental health and for my overall well-being.
You’ll have to pardon me today, I’m having a moment. So too, apparently are “skinny” or “pencil” Christmas trees. I don’t mind developing home fashions for the holidays, but the conversation, I can do without.
I’m feeling fed up with the steady stream of judging, guilt-inducing and just bizarre language about the Holiday and Christmas season. This language is certainly not “seasonal” – it’s not restricted to only December. But I seem to have hit my limit with it. My limit? This headline, from yesterday’s Washington Post.
I think, really, it’s the “Treezempic” term – apparently a term developed in social media.
In Western culture, and perhaps especially it seems North American culture, we seem to have a fixation with monitoring our eating. There is even developing consideration of this fixation, sometimes called Orthorexia, in terms of mental health.
Although being aware of and concerned with the nutritional quality of the food you eat isn’t a problem in and of itself, people with orthorexia become so fixated on so-called ‘healthy eating’ that they actually damage their own well-being and experience health consequences such as malnutrition and/or impairment of psychosocial functioning.
Terms like “indulgent” food, “clean eating,” “pure” food… in my opinion, they all risk putting our mindset toward this kind of thinking.
This week, I was disappointed to hear a radio interview with a dietician who ostensibly was promoting eating well over the Holidays, but seemed instead to focus on ‘indulging,’ but “not too much,” giving yourself permission to “cheat” and generally not chilling out and instead thinking and worrying a lot about food.
This whole thing reminds me of “Skinny” or “Fashion” Santa, which apparently goes back to 2015 (but still seems new to me!).
The alternative? Well I think we should all just take a beat. Enjoy a holiday. If you celebrate over the Holidays, enjoy it. If you are not celebrating, perhaps enjoy the slow-down if you get one? (And if instead you are working hard to help those who do celebrate have time off, thank you!) And see if you can have something delicious without the fixation. Do it for me, do it to fight the dang Treezempic. Thanks
There’s an adage among commuter cyclists that there’s no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong gear. I love that, and for me it has proven to be true. With my studded tires and rain cape, I’m well equipped for riding in all seasons.
But what about the days when the bad weather is in my head? Last weekend I had a day when I just felt exhausted. I hadn’t even put on pants by 4 pm.
It was sunny and I needed something from the hardware store, so I pushed myself to go for a little ride. The e-bike was a perfect choice for a day when I felt too drained to go anywhere.
I started out in the middle option of e-assist, but on the way home I felt energetic enough to drop it to the lowest level. By the end, the weather in my head had cleared up and I was able to enjoy the glorious day around me.
A multi-use pathway along a river, with trees on both sides. The sky is bright blue.
I was organizing/running an arts festival for a community arts festival and, at the same time, every project I’m part of that had been on hiatus for the summer was suddenly revived.
(Seriously,. Last Tuesday, I had four different groups write me to try and set a meeting between Oct 3 & 5…a time when I already had several things scheduled.)
And this is all my volunteer work so it doesn’t include regular work nor does it include household or family-related stuff.
I was getting overwhelmed and frustrated and I kept feeling those annoying, pointless thoughts creeping up on me.
You know the ones, I mean? They gang up on you when things get stressful – even if that stress was impossible to prevent. They start with ‘You should have…’ and they go downhill from there.
I was trying to just ignore them but that seemed to make them fight harder to be heard.
So, I decided to take a few minutes to review.
Was there any truth in those annoying thoughts?
Maybe a little bit here and there (I wrote those things down to journal about later) but mostly no.
I think my brain was looking for a reason why I was so overwhelmed and figured that I must be the cause.
So, I decided to set some boundaries with those thoughts and try to keep them at bay.
I made the little card below – well, ok, it’s two little cards next to each other- and said it aloud every time I looked at it. And, obviously, the gold star was for my hard work – both my work on the festival and my work to stand up to those thoughts.
And it really helped.*
Since I had decided that I was doing the best I could with the resources I had, the only thing to do was keep at it.
I had to do today’s best, whatever that was, with the resources I had at that moment.
I tried not to think about how things could have gone differently with different preparation or different resources, I focused on what I could do right now.
So, I don’t know about your stress level right now.
I don’t know what you have ahead of you, behind you, or around you.
I don’t know what you are trying to deal with.
I don’t know what your brain is annoying you with.
But what I do know is that you are doing the best you can with the resources you have.
I wish you ease and I wish you self-kindness.
And I offer you this gold star for your hard work – your work on all of the things, your work to focus on today’s best (or today’s okayest!), and your work to find ease and to be kind to yourself.
Go Team!
Image description: a drawing of a gold star next to black text that reads ‘You are doing the best that you can with the resources you have.’
*I’m sure that having some clear exercise goals that I could see on my wrist-spy without having to choose to track them also helped with my stress levels. Without my wrist spy on the case, I probably would have subconsciously put my exercise aside for the week. However, having this little phrase reminder close at hand helped on a completely different level. I guess the exercise did the heavy lifting and the little card cleaned up whatever stress was left over.
I’m writing this on the start of my vacation. That might seem a little mundane, but for me it’s a Big Deal. Five months ago I started a new, permanent job, returning to an industry I had left behind to have kids and go to school. The past six years or so, I have been working interesting and fun, but unstable (and underpaid!) jobs on contracts. It is not lost on me that having paid time off (PTO in the business world) is a tremendous privilege, and I am thinking about how to best take advantage of this privilege.
Truth is, I’m really tired, after throwing myself head-long back into a career I had left twenty years ago. It has been awesome and it has been intense.
Happily, I am having a pretty relaxed vacation and excited to have my whole family come visit me in Ontario from British Columbia. We will spend a lot of time at southwest Ontario’s beautiful beaches and do some city-tourism.
A lo-fi photo of my meditation spot in my garden. Gardening always makes me happy so it was the perfect place for me to start!
I am thinking that this vacation is also an opportunity to re-start a regular meditation practice. I started meditating out of necessity (for my mental health!) early in the COVID crisis, when I was really struggling. I found peace by doing simple meditations with an app, in my beautiful vegetable garden.
I subscribed to the app so I had more choices, and I meditated regularly and even followed a few “courses.”
These days, though, “post” COVID as we seem to say, I haven’t taken the time to meditate. I miss it. So I am declaring here that I’m going to restart! Hold me to it, if you are so inclined readers. I can use the accountability :). Really though, I am ready for it.
As spring turns the corner around to summer, and my work-from-home job is feeling more normal, I am turning my own thoughts away from my professional goals and back to my goals related to my health.
In the lead-up to starting my new job in March, I had spent an intensive year looking for a job I felt really good about. For quite some time now, my professional goals have taken priority for me. I’m thrilled about my return to a career in insurance claims, but I am also needing to find balance. Work is intense and I am sometimes finding it hard to turn off my brain. Much to my consternation, I am having some mild low back pain, a totally new thing to me.
So this week I snuck away from my desk for an 8:30am aquafit class offered by in a public City pool. I went because I was feeling achy and stressed and wasn’t really feeling focused.
Much to my surprise, I had a GREAT time even though I hadn’t been in the water in quite a few weeks. Even more joyous for me, my brain was completely cleared. What a cool thing that was. I had a productive, enjoyable work day. Wahoo!
I like aquafit and find deep-water classes the perfect amount of fun versus challenging. When I started attending aquafit intermittently, almost 20 years ago, I was usually the youngest person in the pool. Often, I still am. I’ve often written here about my struggles with exercise here – how fun to get to say something that feels purely positive.
My “home” pool – an older and modest pool that I love!
I’m writing this at the end of the week and my back got achy again. Clearly I need to set myself a schedule for self care – that is not something I’m good at. In fact, I’m writing this as a way to keep myself accountable, and to also create some more positive brain waves.
I’d love recommendations for exercise planning if you have any. I am thinking I need a balance of aquafit, weekly yoga and meditation. My gosh, when I write that, honestly, I’m a bit dazzled. Who even am I? Not the kid who used to literally quiver walking into the school gym for PE class.
