Operation Achieve Anything: Day Two-Hundred-Eighty-One, Dateline 10-8-2018
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“Listening, not imitation, may be the sincerest form of flattery.”
Good afternoon crickets. Welcome to day number two-hundred-eighty-one of Operation Achieve Anything. I just got back from a walk to the store, and I have to tell you, wandering around a residential neighborhood is not the best activity to follow up putting down a pet. For some reason, I thought that it would get me out of the space where we spent her last couple of day, only to instantly end up bummed out while watching the unaware spending quality time while walking their dogs. I even saw one guy pull up to a house with a tiny puppy and balloons as almost a cinematic reminder of the cycle of life.
Then again, maybe the walk was good for me because it did allow me to witness these things instead of just hiding in bed. I’m also happy that I decided to be by her side right until the very end. At first, I wasn’t sure if I would be able to handle it because I’ve been in the same room with any being while they died and I was worried how I would handle any sense of struggle from my poor little pup taking her last breath. At the same time, I couldn’t really deal with the idea of her going without me by her side since she’s been a significant comfort in helping me handle the bout of the depression that landed me back in my mother’s garage.
She gave me something to care for that was outside of myself which was something I really needed because I couldn’t care less about my own health. There were days where her needing to go to the bathroom was the only reason that I got out of bed. For some reason, I’m one of these people who easily forms tight bonds with dogs, so she went from being a house pet to my dog almost overnight merely because she just wouldn’t leave my side.
This is another aspect that made the walk to the store a bit difficult. Since I work from home and allowing me to always be there, she would suffer from separation anxiety whenever I’d put on my shoes. Either that or I was just noticing the separation anxiety within myself. Either way, I always hated to leave her because she would stare at me with those puppy eye’s trying to hypnotize me into bringing her along. The guilt that came from this always led me to by her some treats creating a Pavlovian response when she’d hear the gate open upon my return.
I’d barely be gone for an hour, but based on her reaction, you’d think that I was gone for a week. Then she would double down with her excitement when I’d retrieve her treat from the bag. Coming home to nothing for the first time was kind of hard. All of this kind of plays into yesterday’s assignment based on courage where I was supposed to share whether I try to dance around an issue or whether I plow right through them. The full answer is a little bit of both where I may drag my feet either comedically, or for real but when push comes to shove I will do what needs to be done. Even though my first inclination was that I wouldn’t be able to stomach being in the room while my dog was put down, I knew that on the day, I wouldn’t be able to let her down since we’ve been inseparable for so long.
Today’s assignment strays away from the topic of courage as the Achieve Anything… book now wants me to explore my ability to listen by sharing the type of listener I am. It seems like this is going to be another themed section of the book because there were hints that there are more listening tasks to come, which is one this assignment only sticks to wanting me to explore my listening skills without any instruction to make changes.
Of course, you’ll have to wait for tomorrow’s update to see what I manage to come up with. Until then, I’m going to bedrid myself to mourn as soon as I’m done with my daily obligations. With that, I’m going to wrap this one up as usual and say, good day and good luck to you and all of your projects.
Talk to you soon.
Sincerely,
The Wicker Breaker
P.S. Below are links to my novel, which I plan to promote as part of Operation Achieve Anything, as well as a link to where you can buy the book that is providing the structure to this project in case you would like to purchase it in order to play along.
