My Best Year 2017

So I've had this little niggling idea scratching at the back and inside of my brain for awhile.  I can't say the idea out loud yet as it's not ready for the rigors of everyday life outside of the dark and cozy corners of my gray matter.  Let's just say, since the first minute I realized the horrors of writing a dissertation are fading into blood-streaked sepia tones, I've been gearing up for a project.  The problem: I didn't have anything specific in mind.

Recently, though, I've become enamored with the quiet energy of entrepreneurialism.  Seems like we're in its hey day right now--everyone has a YouTube channel linked to Twitter accounts and Pinterest boards.  Despite my last note, espousing the notion of unplugging, there's something new and fresh about a digital landscape that is waiting to be cultivated with anything you want to put out there that, in many ways, is fail-safe.  As long as you don't mind it being captured forever by the NSA on some server somewhere, if a venture on the web fails--[delete]. And you start over.

So I've hooked in and become fascinated with some of these web-preneurs.  People who have managed to figure out how to live completely fulfilling lives blogging.  Ten years ago, that word didn't exist; now it's a verb and an industry.

How do I get a piece of that?!?! Sounds like the best job in the world.

Obviously, it has it's ups and downs.  I just watched a YouTube video of a girl who was "hurt" by all the "mean things" internet trolls say.  These first world problems make for a very, very hard life.  But it feels like the energy that the pioneers had.  The ether is awash in the musk of digital manifest destiny and like a bitcoin panhandler, I'm hooking up wagon to my oxen, dressing June in a sunbonnet, and setting off on a trail into the great black void.

It's like Oregon Trail but not if you see what I mean.

Anyway, I'm exciting to give this a shot:

First of all, it's a workbook.  The last one of those I had was in phonics in the 3rd grade.  I'm down and pumped.  Second, though, it's making a plan for the next year.  I feel like this will help me sleep the slumber of a person once possessed by demons that have been excised.  It's a weird phantom sensation of loss after such a huge project is over and one day you face that fact that, yes, you have no plan.  That's fun for weeks or months.  When the time ticks into years, it's too long.  I need a plan.  Third, I think I'm *full* of awesome ideas and now I finally feel like it's worth gathering up my guts and taking some risks.  I've felt the keen sting of significant failure enough now that I can truly appreciate the non-risk of losing nothing. There's literally no down side to doing something like this.

And finally, it's time to actualize.  Every day I think more and more about how I have somehow, errantly bought in to the concept of time ticking away being a good thing...like each minute is an accomplishment I can cross off my list.  That is the worst possible way to live.  You cannot seize a moment from behind it.  That's grasping at a moment.  Seizing requires planning.  And risk.  And luck.  And night sweats, I'm sure.

At one point in time, those things terrified me.  Now...that sounds like a pretty exciting group of circumstances.

It's go time.  And I'm ready for it.  I do think this is going to be my very best year ever.  Now I just need to make it happen.

June is Busting Out All Over

June has always been a favorite month for me.  When I was in school, it marked the start of summer vacation.  Now that that monumental joy is felt a little less because I work 12 months a year, at least I can say that June's weather is usually pretty amazing.

This year, June was made awesome by this little girl:

This is Junebug...whom I casually call June.

I've been hoping for a dog for a LOOOONG time.  Dogs are magical to me in a lot of ways and not so much for the reasons people always list off.  Yes, they love you conditionally (because you feed them).  Yes, they are darn cute.  But I have been increasingly feeling that I need a friend who can help me stay in the moment.  I need a pal who is much more spontaneous than I am.  I need a pet who I can watch over.  All of these great caretaking tendencies in me, qualities I think are gifts, have not only gone wasted for probably 10 years but have started to turn in on themselves.  Over the past years I've felt myself harden, becoming edgier, crankier, and finding laughs fewer and farther between.  I've known for a long time, I could not nor did I want to continue this way.

So, magically, when my building suddenly wrote and said dogs were allowed, I started saving.  And about two months ago, when the aftershocks of change I wasn't expected hit particularly hard, I got online and got serious about a dog.  I needed something in my life that would be somewhat of a constant.

It was on June 9 that I saw this face online...and it wasn't love at first sight which was weird.  I was actually somewhat ambivalent but decided going to get a look in person at a shelter that was new to me would be worth the trip, if not just to get myself started.  2 1/2 hours later, this (shedding) furball climbed into the front seat of my car and we were heading home.  I'm not sure exactly what it was that moved me.  In some ways, I think I knew that I had to overcome any sense of hesitation that would always be there.  In other ways, when she came over to me and ever so gently but her head on my lap, I knew we had to be some kind of kindred spirits.  In a shelter that was nothing less than chaos, I found this one sleepy and gentle. "Okay," I thought. "The message won't get much clearer than this. Just do it"

It's now been more than a couple weeks and we're settling in.  Junie's a big personality in a smallish but very long body.  I like her.  And I think she likes me.  She now is the proud owner of a bark collar and a Furminator among a cadre of other squeaky chewy toys.  She is NUTS about peanut butter--both punny and adorable.  She does not love garbage trucks.  But every day that she's been here, I've gotten up with a purpose.  Maybe that, truly, was what I was seeking.

And with a face like this, how can I not sign on every day to this friendship?  

I feel like my old self again, before graduate school or dissertation, or failed jobs and failed friendships.  I think I've been given a chance to start over.  I'm taking it.  To Junie.  We'll have fun.