Reflections on Time

Posted on July 27, 2022 by admin

Time is my least favorite thing of all

Especially when it gives my loved ones a call

Looking at fond memories makes me feel blue

Seeing but not touching; I can’t break through

Mocked by Time as I can’t go back

It forces me forward on my life’s track

Always giving me friend after friend

Only to take them all from me in the end

They go away and I stick around

Wondering why it’s not my body being put in the ground

So many regrets from how certain things went

Chances I wasted and Time poorly spent

I can’t change a thing no matter how hard I try

All I can do is watch my past and cry

Can’t even go back for a visit to show

Those dear to me how I still love them so

I’d love to visit my grandfather one more time

To see Sawyer while still in his prime

Only in dreams can I return to the past

For reunions and visits that don’t ever last

This will only continue in life as I age

Losing loved ones fills me with sadness and rage

Cruelest of all has got to be

The difference in lifespans of Sawyer and me

I’m still young at nearly thirty years old

Yet Sawyer a senior dog at less than half my age, so I’m told

He died in old age and went away from me

Now I have to live my whole life without my best buddy

Even if we’re reunited forever someday

I still have a long life to live before we get to play

How can anyone find this all right?

Or sleep soundly while this weighs on them each night?

I don’t have the answers; all I can do is my best

To live a good life before it’s my turn to rest

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2018: My Favorite Year

Posted on July 20, 2022 by admin

Of all the years I’ve lived, 2018 was by far my favorite year and the best year of my life. I’ve thought this for many years now, including during 2018 itself. Although it contained some troubles, 2018 was mostly a super easy year for me. Almost everything that could have gone well did exactly that and the rest mostly went in a good direction. It was a nice break from the hard stuff in life, especially after 2017, which was one of the hardest years of my life.

All through 2018, I had my dog Sawyer, he was in good health, and we spent a lot of time together. Even with a robust work schedule, lots of hobbies, plenty of day trips, and several trips lasting a whole weekend or even longer, Sawyer and I still got a lot of quality time that year. As with every year I had him, he improved all the wonderful things of 2018 and reduced the pain of the hard things. Since I hadn’t yet developed even a fraction of the emotional intelligence I have now, he gave me a lot of love and comfort during my few struggles that year. All the wonderful time I spent with Sawyer in 2018 is a huge part of what made that year so great.

My skills as a dancer improved tremendously in 2018. This I attribute to a number of things. Perhaps most importantly, I went out swing dancing two to three times a week for most of the year. This included two regular dances and a third dance that came after a weekly lesson. Regular practice alongside weekly instruction took me from a near beginner to at least intermediate level quite quickly. Plus I put a lot of effort into getting feedback from instructors, going into great detail about things I could improve, and spending lots of time working on improving all the small things. Additionally, I went to my first two weekend dance workshops that year. I danced for many hours at each of those, learned a lot of new stuff, got way better at lots of old stuff, and took extra time to visit with one of my closest friends during the second workshop. Plus I learned Balboa in February of that year. As my familiarity and skill with Balboa increased, it soon became my favorite dance and remains so to this day.

I loved hanging out several times a week in 2018 with people close to me, whether we met to dance or do other things together. I had plenty of meaningful and fun experiences with dance folks even outside of dancing. We had lots of beach days, went blueberry picking, hung out in Itchetucknee Springs, and enjoyed lots of parties, evenings out, and other smaller events together. Some events were ones I hosted or made possible. These included a beach day, an Airplane! watch party, and the juggling event that I started that June and still host once a month. It had been many years since I regularly hung out with people just for fun so this was a wonderful feature of 2018 for me.

Additionally, for much of 2018, I talked to one or more of my best friends on the phone almost every night. We’d often talk on my way home from work. Mostly about things going on in our lives, plans to visit each other, fond memories, and other comforting subjects. That was a wonderful way for us to keep in touch, enjoy our time together, grow our friendship, and be there for each other when one of us went through a hard time.

My life outside of dancing was also wonderful overall in 2018. It helped a lot that I left a job I hated in early 2018 and continued the one I had started in the latter half of 2017 that was much more tolerable. A better work schedule gave me more money and more time to spend on cool things. This also helped me rebuild my finances after many financial struggles in 2017. Although it was a highly physical job, I still had plenty of energy to dance, juggle, go to the gym, and do lots of other physical activities. All of that meant I could go out more often with more people to more cool places and do more fun things than I ever had before.

Although I officially started my personal growth journey in 2017, 2018 is when the rubber truly met the road. That’s when I started reading regularly again. After some early inconsistency, I settled on reading at least one chapter of a book each day and stuck to that pretty well throughout the year. Most of the books I read that year and since then have been self-improvement books focused on emotions, communication, making positive change, developing good habits, etc. Getting back into the habit of reading regularly and reading so many useful books built much of the foundation for the incredible personal growth I experienced in 2018 and beyond.

Additionally, I started blogging in August 2018. For a little over a year, I put up a new blog post every day before switching to a weekly posting schedule in early 2020. This blog has been a wonderful way to get my ideas out there, help myself and others, piece my thoughts together, improve my speaking ability, inspire a lot of creative work elsewhere in my life, and improve my writing more than possibly anything else I’ve ever done. It’s one of several wonderful things I started in 2018 that is still improving my life to this day.

The third big step I took in the way of personal development in 2018 came when I started unicycling on Christmas Day after being gifted a brand new unicycle. Although I couldn’t do much at all with it in the final few days of that year, I did start practicing with it the day I got it and every day since, thus starting the habit that paved the way for my current skills. My unicycling journey has shown me that even seemingly impossible tasks can be accomplished with enough persistence and practice (and some useful pointers from people who unicycle better than I do). It’s also greatly improved my balance, allowed me to immediately pick up rola bola, added numerous skills that I can use for fun and performance, and given me some regular exercise every day since I started.

I can only think of two majorly painful experiences during 2018. The first was being turned down romantically in the spring. Even though she was as kind and gentle as possible and we were still on pretty good terms afterward, I still felt a lot of pain from that. My emotional intelligence was basically nonexistent back then so it took years before I even started properly working through that pain. Once I did, all the pain went away and our friendship has never been better. The other painful event came in December. That’s when I learned that all my friends are acquaintances but not all acquaintances are my friends. I learned that the hard way and it took a long time for me to get over that pain. Important lesson that I’ve carried with me ever since. There were a handful of much smaller painful experiences in 2018 but nothing like most of my years before or since then.

Despite some painful experiences, 2018 still feels like the song “Everything is Fine” by Josh Turner. I had a deep sense of contentment throughout that year. So many enjoyable things happened and more than made up for the few painful things. I’m still dependent on enough things going well for me to feel good, though not as much as I was in 2018. Despite having that dependency to a greater degree and also having even more emotional issues back then than I do now, enough things went well for me that it was an incredible year. I still say it was a better year for me than any year since, even though I’ve gained way more emotional intelligence and let go of a ton of negativity the past several years. I don’t know how much I’m romanticizing 2018 but, as far as I can remember, it was a wonderful year in almost every way possible.

This is not all in retrospect; 2018 seemed amazing even while it was occurring. I and at least one of my friends noticed how wonderful everything was as we were experiencing it. There’s a saying about wishing there were a way to know you were in the good times while they’re still happening. In 2018, that’s exactly what occurred. That year was so golden that some of us recognized it at the time rather than only realizing it after the fact.

As much as I miss 2018 and wish I could relive it, I know that it’s not coming back and that there’ll never be another year exactly like it, even if almost everything returns to how it was back then. Even if there’s regular swing dancing three times a week at the same venues that I frequented back then. Even if everyone who danced regularly during that year comes back to dance regularly again. Even if I get much more time with my loved ones once again. Even if most things were already in a great place or start going in the right direction soon for most people. Even if there’s an underlying sense of easiness, peace, and lesiure to everything. Even if all of that and everything else I haven’t mentioned about that wonderful year comes back, I still won’t have Sawyer. The best year of my life was made even better by having my little best buddy with me through the many sunny days and the few cloudy days. As much as I hope to have years as good as (and even better than) 2018, I know that they’ll never be as good as they could be since Sawyer won’t be with me in any of them. Him being gone reminds me that I can never go back to the good times, except in my memories.

As you can see, there was plenty of stuff that made 2018 a wonderful year for me. Although much of what went well for me that year was outside my control, I did do quite a bit to contribute to the excellence. Avoiding lots of previous destructive habits, developing positive habits, spending more time around good people and less time around bad people, pursuing enjoyable activities, lifting weights regularly, working on myself almost every day, etc. Sometimes it seems like 2018 was just a beautiful dream. So much was enjoyable and so little was painful. Everything seemed chill and relaxed that year. Nobody close to me seemed in a rush to get to a certain place in life, everyone seemed much more present than in later years, kindness abounded, and there was an easygoing feeling surrounding everything. I miss all of that. I miss the calm pace of that year. I also miss having lots of time to have a full schedule while still taking great care of myself and loving life. Now it seems like I have hardly any time for anything, especially my loved ones, my hobbies, and my own self-care. I don’t know if I’ll ever have another year similar to 2018. I hope I do. With how my life has gone the past several years, I could really use another wonderful year soon.

Posted in Adventures, Getting Along with Each Other, Inspirational People, Life Hacks, Personal Freedom, Self-Improvement, Swing Dancing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on 2018: My Favorite Year

Healing Deep Trauma

Posted on July 13, 2022 by admin

I still have a lot of pain from being mocked, shamed, guilted, yelled at, hit, intimidated, and otherwise punished, hurt, and traumatized when I felt afraid and asked for help early in life. Even now, that often leads to me feeling overwhelmed, freezing up, and not knowing what to do. I don’t want to fail and I also don’t want to be punished for asking for help.

Some people who constantly work with customers say they’ve gotten used to people being hostile to them. I never have, despite all of my jobs having a huge amount of customer interaction. All I’ve gotten from repeated exposure to that hostility is more guilt and shame, which makes me feel even worse about myself and makes it even harder to handle the next hostile encounter. That’s why I so appreciate the people who use a gentle approach with me, like a loving parent or grandparent would take.

This is why I still feel upset at times with how people talk to me, even in small ways. For example, I might say I haven’t watched a certain movie or TV show and someone almost inevitably responds with “You’ve never watched it?!” Regardless of their intentions, that comes across as hostile to me and can put me into fight-or-flight mode, especially when I’ve already been feeling stressed for extended periods of time. Similarly, when someone makes a point emotionally in a difficult discussion, adrenaline rushes through my body and I tend to freeze up as I think they’re feeling upset at me and will lash out at me verbally, physically, or both. This isn’t because of what they say but how they say it as that fear response doesn’t happen if they make the exact same point calmly instead of emotionally.

I have to be careful what movies and TV shows I watch when I’m feeling real bad. If I’m already feeling stressed, I don’t want to add to that stress by seeing lots of hostile, dramatic exchanges between people, even if they’re fictional characters. I’ve wished since I was a kid that there could be more works of fiction in which things go well and we get to explore other worlds without running into the same problems that exist in our world. As I’ve gotten more knowledgeable about those problems and why they exist, I often come up with solutions to problems that regularly appear in fiction; that has been useful for improving my own interactions, either by getting them back on track or by preventing them from going off track in the first place.

It’s also hard for me to avoid assuming that I’ve said or done something to upset someone close to me if they go a long time without reaching out to me or returning my calls and texts. Even though I’ve often been unable to respond to someone for any number of reasons that don’t involve feeling upset at them, I still fear the worst when I’m on the receiving end of extended radio silence. That’s why a brief message that from someone saying that they’re unable to talk for a while puts me at ease; at least then I know that I haven’t messed up and that our relationship is fine.

That leads to several of the reasons I treat other people well: I know what it’s like to be treated poorly and don’t want to make anyone else feel that way, I fear what someone will do to me if I even unintentionally treat them badly, and I hope that my treating them well will result in them treating me well. The third point doesn’t always work as lots of people have treated me poorly even after I’ve treated them well, whether I did so out of genuine kindness or out of fear. Generally, however, people I treat well also treat me well, and vice versa.

I’m still working on healing all that trauma so I can be more decisive, ask for help as needed without feeling ashamed, and no longer be subject to a tsunami of internalized negative feelings when doing something even remotely confrontational. I also want to get better at voicing my concerns early on while the problems are still small. That’s when they’re easier to resolve and less likely to result in huge conflicts. Holding my tongue out of fear only leads to mounting frustration on my part, a chance of exploding when I’ve had enough, and problems sticking around instead of being eliminated.

More than anything else, that’s why I wish everyone would heal their trauma and communicate kindly. I hate the thought of having to deal with hostile people who make me feel in danger; that wouldn’t happen if everyone worked through their issues and treated each other well. Since I’ve learned repeatedly over the past several years that I can’t make anyone else heal, be kind, or communicate effectively, I do my best to heal myself, communicate as effectively as I can, spend lots of time with kind people, and spend as little time as possible with hostile people.

I’m still having a hard time trusting people, especially new people. These days I’m mostly keeping to myself and the few people I already know and trust. Hard to do otherwise since I’ve been burned so much the past few years by people who said they loved me while consistently treating me like garbage.

Much of my time is spent avoiding the urge to verbally blast people or get into fights, especially over things that don’t matter. Though this can still be difficult, it gets easier the more trauma I heal. I find going at my own pace to be helpful. I also like to pause before responding, avoid speaking until I’ve gathered my thoughts, and steer clear of simply affirming what someone else has said without adding to it, going somewhere with it, or disagreeing if I do genuinely disagree. All of that makes me less inclined to respond or act with hostility, less interested in the egoic payoffs of a fight, better able to see peaceful paths, and more inclined to follow them.

I’ve spent most of this year working on healing all of this trauma. I still have a long way to go but I’ve made lots of progress already. It helps that I worked on some of the trauma in 2020 and went much deeper in 2021. Getting a head start before things started unraveling for me late last year gave me a big advantage. It made the end of 2021 and all of 2022 thus far manageable, even when it felt overwhelming for most of my waking days. I can’t imagine how I’d be feeling right now if I hadn’t worked through so much before 2022 started.

All this healing is even more difficult without my dog Sawyer. I don’t have my little best friend anymore to comfort me after interacting with hostile people, remind me what love looks like, encourage me to be the best person I can be, and help me be that person. I’m glad I healed as much as I did during Sawyer’s life; I wish I had done even more healing before he died. At this point, I’m hoping that my improved communication abilities will allow me to avoid most of the hostility that could arise from interacting with people who consistently choose the low road and that my increased emotional intelligence will finally let me shrug off hostility when it does occur. All I can do is my best, and my best gets a little better every day.

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Rest, Recovery, and Growth

Posted on July 6, 2022 by admin

I’ve noticed some people want to grow continuously. They undergo a number of challenges and stressors (often going out of their way for them) in the hope of reaching new heights as a result of growing from each one of them. Here’s my take on this.

To start, constant growth is impossible. There are limits as to how much anyone or anything can grow physically, intellectually, emotionally, and in every other way. Aside from that, nobody can grow without appropriate amounts of rest and recovery. It’s not the pain or challenge that makes you grow but how well you recover from it. Dedicated athletes understand this well. As intensely and consistently as they train, the successful ones know that they have to be equally as committed to their recovery if they’re going to make it in their chosen sport. That’s why they prioritize good nutrition, quality sleep, sufficient amounts of food, effective stress management, and a variety of other aspects of self-care before and after an intense training session. If they don’t, then they risk slower progress, regression, injury, and losing to their competitors who prioritize recovery.

What doesn’t kill you may traumatize you. If it does, it’ll take a huge amount of time and work to heal from that trauma. Some things build character and others build trauma responses that can take a whole lifetime to heal. This brings us to the fight-or-flight system. That’s another name for the sympathetic nervous system. It’s intended to get us out of dangerous situations by diverting our bodily resources to wherever they’re most needed in an emergency. While the sympathetic nervous system is meant to turn on only in dangerous situations, it remains active constantly or almost constantly in many people who have undergone a great deal of trauma. This can result in chronic anxiety, depression, digestion issues, sleeping trouble, mood swings, poor decision making, and a host of other problems.

There is also the parasympathetic nervous system. This is what activates after the danger has passed and allows us to resume a state of calmness. It can be activated through a number of calming activities: floating, letting go, meditating, listening to soothing music, watching a comforting video, etc. Relaxing physically and emotionally allows the body to heal in ways it can’t while under the endless stress of being in constant fight-or-flight mode. When one system is active, the other is inactive. Good health requires regularly deactivating the sympathetic nervous system and activating the parasympathetic nervous sytem.

I’ve known several people who were regressing rather than growing because they faced endless challenges without ever taking time to recover. They took out their pain and stress on nearly everyone around them (even people they claimed to love) due to never getting enough time to rest and heal. They were always in fight-or-flight mode and often chose fight even in casual situations. Some of them intellectually understood all of this and even knew multiple ways to activate their parasympathetic nervous systems but they rarely, if ever, practiced what they preached. That was also the case for those who knew how to communicate effectively but almost never did. That showed me that it’s not just about knowing what to do or understanding this stuff intellectually; actually putting that knowledge to work on a daily basis is what brings good results.

So many people seem to be addicted to challenges. They’re always looking for something stressful, whether it’s a difficult sport, verbal fight, physical fight, and so on. What kind of growth are they looking to get from this, and to what end? When they do complete one of their many challenges, they don’t even get to enjoy the good feelings that come with that accomplishment before moving onto the next challenge. As a result, they always appear to feel restless and unsatsified in life.

Even if biting off more than you can chew doesn’t traumatize you, in can still hurt you in other ways. It’s easy to get hurt by taking steps that are way too big. Plenty of people end up with lifelong injuries from lifting way too much weight, running far too fast or far too long, getting into the ring with fighters way above their skill level, etc. Any good weight training program for new lifters will involve starting light and gradually ramping up the weight as strength increases. The Couch to 5k running program starts off with short bursts of running in between long stretches of walking; the amount of running gradually increases and the amount of walking gradually decreases as the runner builds up endurance over time. And a quality fighting instructor will start out by teaching new fighters the basics and only take them to the next level once they’ve mastered the previous one. Doing things once you’re ready for them prevents injuries, learning bad technique, and other issues that can come from rushing instead of progressing steadily and resting as needed.

Additionally, I disagree with the popular notion that growth only occurs outside of one’s comfort zone. I’ve experienced plenty of growth from within my comfort zone. I’ve also grown through gradually expanding my comfort zone instead of instantly exploding it open. That’s how exposure therapy works. You start off with a bit of interaction with something you fear. Once you feel comfortable at that level, you slowly add more interaction over time until you no longer fear that thing. This is how I’ve been successful at nearly everything I’ve done. I start by building habits around what I want to do. These almost always start off slowly, such as by spending a few minutes a day working at a particular thing. Once that thing becomes a daily practice, my focus on it expands until it fits in nicely with my other routines. This is a much better approach for me than jumping fully into something, immediately feeling overwhelmed, and then backing away from it for a long time if not forever.

I enjoy a combination of intensity and relaxation for a sustainable, enjoyable life. There are days in which I do lots of physical activity: my monthly juggling event, helping someone move, doing manual labor for someone I know, etc. I often feel better as a result of the increased activity; I tend to sleep better, feel more inner peace, and shrug off things that would normally upset me. All of that, however, depends on me getting a break to rest and recover after the activity is over. If I get that break, then I can enjoy a nice meal, stroll, or conversation. If I don’t get it, then I’ll feel even more exhausted, stressed, and irritable. I may also get sick if my body is so busy attempting to recover from too much activity that it can’t fight off a disease I’ve picked up.

I make sure to give myself extra time to rest and recover during challenging times. Since I lost my dog Sawyer a few months ago, I’ve been pursuing comfort as best as I can each day. This includes getting enough sleep, spending lots of quiet time by myself after being around people, releasing a lot of painful emotions every day, and avoiding negative situations whenever possible. Making time to rest and heal from this and other painful past situations is allowing me to recover and enjoy life again.

Recently, I had two hard weeks in a row. These consisted of tons of emotional pain, many nights of rough sleep, and feeling on edge each day. I needed a good week and, fortunately, that’s what I got in the final week of June thanks to much more letting go, consistently good quality sleep, avoidance of negative situations, and quality time with people close to me. All the rest and recovery I got that week did the trick. I now feel better overall than I have in a long time.

Although I can’t know precisely what would have happened if I’d had three bad weeks in a row, I do know from past experience that I’d have gone to a bad place. Whenever I’ve been unable to catch a break for that long, I’ve felt like a video game character who gets knocked down, starts to get up, and then gets knocked down again before he’s fully back on his feet and stable. I need time to get up, dust myself off, and then carry on. Those times when I couldn’t do that were always extremely painful, draining, and demoralizing, and it took me a long time to recover from them once they were over.

If I have to do something quite stressful, I’ve found a comfort sandwich to be incredibly beneficial. A comfort sandwich is where I do something pleasant followed by the stressful task and then finish with another pleasant activity. That’s much nicer than having nothing but stress all the way through or having a stressful ending to an otherwise pleasant experience. A bad ending can totally ruin my day even if I enjoyed everything else about it up until that point so I do whatever I can to make each day end on a good note, especially during stressful times.

In general, I prefer to enjoy what I’m doing instead of constantly challenging myself to get better at it. If I’m hating activities I do for fun rather than loving them (which can easily happen if I focus too much on practice and too little on fun), then I change how I approach them so that I can enjoy them once again. Sometimes I enjoy doing something super easy for fun, rest, and relaxation. This is extra beneficial if I’ve done a lot of difficult things and failed at several of them; at that point, I just want something simple that I know I can succeed at fairly easily. That small sense of accomplishment always makes me feel better and allows me to carry on with other, more challenging things. Sometimes it’s good to simply play and have fun instead of constantly practicing and attempting to get better.

It’s taken me almost three months to heal as much as I have from losing Sawyer and I still have a long way to go. Most days I still take it slow, even slower at times than I did in the earliest days after his death. That has allowed me to continue healing and feeling better even as I go out to visit, play, help, and do other meaningful things with other people. If I had thrown myself right back into my work or anything else without dealing with the strongest emotions while they were still overwhelming for me, I doubt I’d have healed at all these past few months. If anything, I’d probably be feeling even worse due to all that pent-up stress. That very thing occurred in 2020 with intense pain (though still less intense than what I’ve felt this year) that I ignored for more than a month before I finally started working through it. I don’t go for the approach of putting my head down and burying myself in busyness. That’s never helped me feel better. Feeling through the emotions is the only thing that’s ever given me lasting relief.

Even before Sawyer’s death, I’d been taking lots of time this year to rest, recover, and heal from pain, trauma, and other negativity, whether from early in my life or earlier this year. The remainder of this year and each year after will be much better without all that negativity weighing me down. This is the most rest I’ve had in any year since 2018. That extra rest is allowing me to finally heal the deep-seated pain I’ve carried with me for most of my life. I don’t know yet where this is taking me but it’s already taken me farther than I ever imagined possible. I look forward to seeing where I go as I continue to heal, rest, recover, and grow.

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Adding the Positive

Posted on June 29, 2022 by admin

Last year, I wrote a post about removing the negative. I still find that to be the most effective thing for relieving stress, overcoming obstacles, and enjoying life. Lately, however, I’ve realized that adding the positive is also extremely important.

I started doing this a while after my dog Sawyer died. The first few weeks I mostly spent alone at home working through the worst pain I’ve ever felt. While I did go out occasionally and do some things with a few people close to me, I kept those jaunts to a minimum. I hated being away from home for more than a few minutes, I barely enjoyed anything I did, and I broke down a lot throughout each day. As I’ve continued reducing the pain through daily inner work, I’ve been able to go out more often, stay out longer, be around more people, and better enjoy whatever I do.

The past few months, I’ve gotten through several firsts without Sawyer in my life: going to my favorite restaurants I enjoyed during his life, seeing people I met after I got him, going places I regularly visited before his death, etc. Each first visit has been painful since I no longer have Sawyer to tell me goodbye before I go or greet me when I return home. Despite still being painful, the second time I’ve done each of those since his death has so far been overall easier than the first time. I hope that continues.

Most positive experiences come with a certain amount of distraction. When the experiences end and the distractions decrease, the pain becomes apparent once again. I often notice it in quiet moments during a fun event or when I experience something that reminds me of Sawyer. I still have to work through the pain even on my most distracting days. As I continue doing that, I remember more activities I enjoy doing, including things I enjoyed doing during Sawyer’s life. Having less pain makes it easier to enjoy those activities again and find them almost as satisfying as I once did. Doing enjoyable things also makes it easier to work through the pain; lots of positivity allows me to get down to the deep-seated negative emotions in ways I can’t when I’m barely getting through the day. As long as I have enough time to myself on the days I do a lot of fun things, I can work through a lot of pain and feel much better than I do on the days in which I seem to just be killing time until bed.

Adding the positive is a wonderful complement to removing the negative. In fact, I see them as two sides of the same coin; neither can truly be done without the other. Pursuing positive experiences and welcoming positive emotions lets me see that life goes on, even if it is different or less enjoyable for me than it once was. Avoiding negative scenarios and eliminating negative emotions allows me to enjoy the nice parts of life and better handle the rough parts. Sawyer was such a huge part of my life that it’s been a struggle to find new life for myself. That gets a little easier the more I work through the pain, the more I pursue past enjoyments, and the more I find new things worth doing. I look forward to adding even more positivity to my life and seeing what that does for me.

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Review of A Grief Observed

Posted on June 22, 2022 by admin

A Grief Observed is a short book by CS Lewis. Despite its brevity, it covers much of Lewis’s journey through his grief over the death of his wife, Joy Davidman, whom he calls H in the book. There’s lots of great stuff in here so let’s take a look.

The book starts off in the early days after H’s death. Lewis discusses everything in present tense as he recorded his emotional states and thoughts as they came up rather than reflecting on them later on. His writing covers grief, anger, fear, frustration, and a general sense of not knowing what to do in life outside of his usual work, which seemed to be largely unaffected.

There are three chapters of intense pain followed by one chapter of apparent relief. Lewis may not have been completely out of the woods by the end of the book but he seemed to be feeling much less pain than earlier, along with a renewed faith that he could carry on even without H. At times, he expresses remorse and perhaps even embarrassment at some things he felt, thought, and said earlier when the pain was more intense. Despite that, he doesn’t seem to be too hard on himself for being human and struggling accordingly.

It surprised me to see Lewis, a man best known for his strong defenses of Christianity in a number of other books, question and criticize God’s existence, power, and love in this book. That his grief was so strong as to bring up those feelings, thoughts, and words speaks volumes. I appreciated his courage in stating how he truly felt and how he saw things during the earliest stages of his grieving. Even though this book was originally part of his personal writings and was later published under a pseudonym before finally being republished under his own name, it can be hard to be honest even with oneself about the most painful feelings and the most controversial ideas, plenty of which Lewis included in A Grief Observed. It was wonderful to see him hold nothing back as he described a lot of the painful emotions that he experienced after losing H. He accomplished what few people are willing or able to do in private, let alone in a book made available to the general public.

Lewis talks about his fears of forgetting H and remembering a faulty idea of her rather than she herself. Alongside this was the difficulty of not having her there anymore to dash any incorrect ideas he has about her. I have had similar fears and difficulties since I lost my dog Sawyer. Recently, also I felt fear and frustration over occasionally imagining another dog in his place when recalling some memories from our time together. I wonder if Lewis ever briefly forgot how H looked in his recollections.

I don’t know how long it took Lewis to get to the peace he described in the final chapter but it was encouraging to see him arrive at that point, especially after a long period of him not knowing if he ever would. I’ve had similar experiences with my own grief over losing Sawyer. All the emotional work I’ve done these past few months has given me fleeting moments of peace that, I hope, will become longer, deeper, and more robust as I continue healing.

A Grief Observed is the first CS Lewis book I’ve read in several years. It’s been the most relatable to me of all of his books I’ve read thus far and I’m glad I read it. Reading it once gave me a lot of comfort and I’m planning to reread it soon. I think it could help a lot of people who are struggling with grief and other painful emotions, especially after losing a loved one. I even think it would be helpful regardless of whether or not one agrees with Lewis’s views on Christianity. As with Lewis, it looks like there will be healing for me even in places where it once seemed impossible, and I look forward to that.

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My Take on Endings

Posted on June 15, 2022 by admin

From November 2019 until November 2020, Mark Fischbach and Ethan Nestor-Darling hosted a YouTube channel called Unus Annus. They put up at least one video every day for a year and then deleted the channel. This was their plan from the start as a way to highlight two of their ideas: appreciate what you’ve got while you have it, and endings are what make things special and meaningful. Those ideas made up the underlying theme of their channel even if they didn’t talk about them in every video.

While I completely agree with appreciating what you have while you have it, I completely disagree with their notion about endings. I think it’s too simplistic and ignores too many important things. Endings by themselves don’t make things special or make us miss things once they’re over. After all, lots of things end without being missed: abusive relationships, diseases from which someone fully recovers, wars, boring conversations, etc. Plus the people who say that endings make things special and meaningful have no experience with things that last forever, so how can they know whether or not they’re correct?

Rather than making things meaningful, endings just make us miss the things we love once they’re gone. Effort, consistency, and love make things special, meaningful, and worth doing. The best relationships are the ones with the most consistent commitments to love, not the ones that end soonest. I have many relationships in my life that I absolutely love, whether they’ve been going for a short while or as long as I can remember. I also have had many bad relationships that ended and I’m glad they’re over. If endings made relationships special, then I’d miss the bad ones that have ended and not care as much (or at all) about the wonderful ones that are still going.

The longer a relationship lasts, the more love grows and deepens and the better both participants learns how to love each other (as long as they both remain committed to love). I know how to better love someone after I’ve known them for many years than I did when we had only known each other for a few months. I don’t see why that couldn’t continue without limit. I’ve never known two people in a committed, loving relationship who have said that their love was worse after many decades together than it was when they first started. If love continues to grow and relationships continue to improve without limit, then relationships that lasted literally forever would continually grow deeper, more loving, and more meaningful.

Even if there is any truth to this idea about endings making things meaningful, endings would still only be one piece of the puzzle. Another necessary piece would be the knowledge that whatever one loves will someday end. After all, lots of things end before someone becomes aware of that fact, if they’re ever aware of it at all. Plenty of little kids lose family members before they learn about death. Yet despite having little to no concept of death, young kids still want to spend time with friends and family, play games, watch TV and movies, etc. Their lives don’t lack meaning for the first several years and then suddenly become special and enjoyable once they learn about death. Why? Because they put effort into what they do. Even with the knowledge that something will end, effort and love are still needed to make it special.

All of the above plays into Unus Annus. Mark and Ethan didn’t simply put up slapdash videos for a year and then delete the channel. Hardly anybody, if anybody at all, would have cared about or missed the channel if that’s all they had done. Instead, they (and everyone else on their team) put a ton of time and effort into every single video they posted. They took time away from their own channels and lives to create the best content they could for Unus Annus. Content that showcased their personalities, humor, creativity, and hearts. As a result of all that effort and love, plenty of people who watched the channel while it was around miss it now that it’s gone, including myself. That wouldn’t have happened if it had simply existed for a while and then ended without ever including any effort or love.

My life with my dog Sawyer was special and loving even in our earliest days together. I rarely thought about his eventual death as dwelling too much on death can lead to desperation on my part, which is not love. It can also make me worry to the point that I miss out on a beautiful relationship while it’s still happening. Our love grew and deepened and strengthened over our 11 years together, even while he was still in good health and had many years of life ahead of him. I don’t believe that our relationship would have been any less special if it had lasted longer or if it had continued endlessly. I hope I’ll see Sawyer again someday and that we’ll be best friends forever. I don’t see why that would ruin our relationship or make our love for each other any less signficant; I actually find that notion appalling, along with the notion that our relationship was only special and meaningful since it was finite. That completely ignores what each of us did for each other and puts our wonderful relationship on the same level as every horrible relationship I’ve had. I hate that my time on Earth with Sawyer is over, I hope to see him again, and I’m grateful that we made our time together so wonderful, special, loving, and meaningful. I hope that my other relationships can get to a similar level if they’re not already there.

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Never Enough Time

Posted on June 8, 2022 by admin

My life with my dog Sawyer went by way, way, way too fast. Even though I had him for 11 of his 12 years, it seemed like we’d just said our first hello before the time came for our final goodbye. I don’t think this is merely because we loved and enjoyed our life together so much. Other experiences that I enjoyed immensely seemed to go by much, much, much slower. Summer breaks in elementary school, the first few years of high school, and so on. Summers seemed to last forever when I was a kid; 2-3 months often felt like a year or more. A few years of school felt like an entire lifetime, even though I enjoyed it overall. How can that be the case when 11 full years with Sawyer felt like almost no time at all?

I think a huge part of it is how modern life is set up. Modern life is like a big conveyor belt constantly moving us from one place to the next without giving us time to rest and enjoy where we’re at. There’s so much pressure to always be chasing the next thing. The next event, the next day, the next job, the next promotion, the next career move, the next business, the next customer, the next paycheck, the next income stream, the next quarter, the next word, the next conversation. No time to rest, enjoy life, visit with loved ones, feel at peace, and just be for a while. No time to even appreciate what you’ve accomplished that you were striving toward for so long; as soon as that’s done, it’s onto the next thing.

Even hobbies aren’t immune to this. The pressure to constantly create and do is endless, even with fun activities. Even if someone avoids the pressure to turn a hobby into a business (more on that below), they can still feel pressured to be constantly creating through that hobby. Always striving to get better, always studying, always working on the next big thing with it, always learning, and always putting it above nearly everything else in life. Practicing rather than playing. Taking it too seriously instead of having fun with it. That can suck all the fun out and turn a beloved hobby into a boring chore.

It gets worse. So many people think that a fun hobby should be turned into a business. While this works well for some people, it’s a nightmare for others. Suddenly, an activity they once enjoyed exploring in their free time is now a source of income. It’s no longer enough to do it when they can, have fun, use it for stress relief, and not worry about what they do with it, where it goes, or what anyone else thinks about it. Now they have to pursue it almost constantly, make sure they do it as well as possible, find customers, come up with pricing information, make a website, manage several social media accounts, deal with detractors, and handle everything else involved with running a business. This can be even more stressful if it becomes their primary or even sole source of income. All of this in addition to living life, keeping in touch with friends and family, pursuing other interests, and keeping up with any jobs or schooling they might be doing. For many people who attempt to turn a hobby into a profession, they end up hating the thing they once loved.

This is one of many ways in which modern life often seems like one big commercial. There are so many attempts to sell stuff to us, even around meaningful, touching works (such as ads on YouTube videos about lost loved ones, guided meditations, etc). So many places and activities involve spending money instead of simply hanging out. Plus the more money we spend, the less is available for the essentials and the more hours most of us have to work to replace that lost money, which takes us away from our loved ones even more.

So many people spend the bulk of their lives attempting to make money. Some take this to the next level by working round the clock in the hope of making enough money to retire early. Even if they succeed, they still missed out on lots of time with their loved ones that they’ll never get back while they were working to get ahead. And it’s even worse if they fail; then they can’t retire early and they’ve also missed lots of precious time with their loved ones in their attempt to get more of it later. If they end up having to work overtime as a result of that failure, they’ll miss even more of those special, irreplaceable moments.

Sometimes adults do actually slow down and enjoy life for a while. A nice vacation with little to no itinerary, a long road trip with no particular destinations in mind, a hike along a mountain range that takes months and has no real timetable, etc. Whether alone or with loved ones, they really sink their teeth into the moment on these trips and make wonderful memories that last a lifetime. Unfortunately, many of them get caught up once again in the mad rush of modern life as soon as the trip ends. While such trips result in lasting lifestyle changes for a few, they represent mere momentary diversions for others, who may now feel even more stressed as they rush to “catch up” on everything they missed while they were away.

The breakneck pace of modern life is exhausting. It prevents me from enjoying what’s going on in the moment, keeps me feeling stressed out, and blocks a lot of meaningful interactions with the people and animals I love. It also makes it essentially pointless to work toward anything since I won’t even be able to appreciate something when I accomplish it; by then, I’ll be working toward the next big thing. Before I know it, another loved one has died, moved away, or gotten caught up in something that’ll keep us apart much longer than either of us want. Why is this a thing, and why is it so common? I’ve heard that people in ancient hunter-gatherer societies worked fewer hours and had more time with their loved ones than most modern humans. If that’s true, then what went wrong between then and now? Why can’t we have that same amount of time freedom? And what can be done to fix it?

There’s hardly any time for people to thoroughly grieve and heal from huge losses of loved ones before being expected to return to work, school, or feeling “normal”. A coworker from one of my jobs went in to work after taking his dog in to be put down that morning. I can’t imagine doing that as I’m still struggling almost two months after losing Sawyer. Everyone needs time to grieve, feel, heal, and recover so they can be healthy and avoid holding onto pain or passing that pain on to family members, friends, kids, coworkers, etc. Yet so often that crucial time is denied due to the pressure to constantly be producing something for… what purpose, exactly?

Until I graduated high school and started working, I wasn’t aware of any of this. Time moved a lot slower before then, even when I had a lot going on. I always seemed to have enough time for friends, family, everything else that was important, and plenty of stuff that was optional. The more years I’ve spent as an adult, the faster time has seemed to move and the less time I have for anything, especially the most important things. That’s why a few summer breaks felt longer than my 11 years with Sawyer. That may also be why I see this the way I do and why I believe so strongly that this has to change.

While I am concerned about all of this because I miss Sawyer, my concerns are also for the new parents who blink and suddenly their kids have moved out. For the young newlywed couple who says “I do” and the next thing they know they’re retired. For the kids who can’t enjoy everything great about being kids because they always have to be thinking ahead and have their whole lives planned out before they leave high school. For everyone who misses out on a lot of special, meaningful, and priceless moments with their loved ones because of how modern life is set up. Moments they’ll never get back. Moments that are replaced either by meaningless experiences or by things that are way less important than their loved ones.

Everything moves too fast, especially my life with Sawyer. I hate all the trappings of modern life that so often took me away from Sawyer. I wish modern life were much simpler so I could have spent more time with him and so that I can now spend more time with my loved ones while we’re all still here. Improving my time management skills has helped in some ways but there are some issues it hasn’t fixed. Almost everyone I love seems to be pulled away from me into different careers, locations, and activities. That means I end up spending almost no time around the people I love deeply while I’ve spent tons of time around people who’ve consistently treated me horribly. I’m still figuring out how to have more meaningful experiences and fewer trivial or painful experiences in my life. I don’t know what could be done on a large scale to make that possible for everyone who wants it but I hope whatever it is happens, and soon.

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Signs That I’m Having a Hard Time

Posted on June 1, 2022 by admin

I can usually tell when I’m having a hard time, even if it takes me a while to realize that it’s more than merely a rough day or a rough week. Ever since a few days before my dog Sawyer’s death, I’ve felt upset and on edge; I’ve felt that way even more since I lost him. Before I can do anything to feel better, I have to first notice that I’m feeling bad. Here are some signs that I’m having a hard time.

  1. Sleep issues: disruptions, waking up in the night, trouble falling asleep, trouble staying asleep, trouble going back to sleep after waking up, feeling tired regardless of sleep quality, consistently staying up late, consistently sleeping in late, not getting enough sleep, not getting enough quality sleep
  2. Stomach issues: little to no appetite, getting full with an amount of food that normally would leave me still feeling hungry, lots of nausea, some cramps, using medicine to settle my stomach
  3. Trouble starting and finishing things: taking a long time to complete even simple tasks, taking three or more days to watch a relatively short video, putting lots of things off until later, spending hardly any time pursuing my hobbies and passions
  4. Feeling spacey: having trouble finishing my thoughts and sentences, forgetting what I was about to do or have already done, forgetting what I was saying while saying it, doing some things multiple times, having almost constant brain fog, losing all track of time
  5. Neglecting self-care: not working through emotions as much, not stretching as much, getting caught up in negative thoughts and self-talk, not doing many things I deeply enjoy, observing pointless drama instead of ignoring it, taking shallow breaths through my mouth instead of deep breaths through my nose
  6. Distractions: constantly being on one or more electronic devices, spending lots of time on social media, watching videos endlessly, never being present in the moment, always looking ahead to the next thing, not enjoying what I’m doing at the time, almost always wanting to talk to someone I trust
  7. Dwelling on the past: reminiscing endlessly about good times, wishing I could go back to live in my favorite moments forever, wanting to avoid the present, dreading the future, thinking all my best days are behind me, remembering past difficult seasons of my life, longing for what I once had
  8. Struggling in conversation: having little to nothing to say, not wanting to engage, mostly responding rather than initiating, preferring to observe rather than participate, stumbling over my words, feeling anxious instead of calm even around friends
  9. Isolating myself: spending even more time by myself, spending lots of time around the house, being way less social even when I go out, feeling and acting small in public, wanting to go home shortly after leaving the house
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How I’m Healing From Losing Sawyer

Posted on May 25, 2022 by admin

I’ve felt tons of pain since I lost my dog Sawyer last month. I miss so many of the things we did together. Pets, snuggles, cuddles, holding him, kisses, playing together, sleeping near each other, and plenty more. Generally, I miss being around him physically and feeling him against me. Then there are all the sounds he made when sleeping, eating, running, walking, playing, and feeling excited, stressed, and sleepy. There’s seeing him look out the window, sleep on the floor or in one of his beds (or on various other things on the floor), enjoy the cool morning air outside, and chase squirrels and lizards in the backyard. I miss hearing him bark and yell out the front window, howl when he felt excited, whine in his sleep, knock on my door when he wanted to visit, playfully growl during playtime, and make all kinds of other unexpected, hilarious, and endearing sounds. Beyond all that, I miss his personality, all the little quirks he had, all the routines we established, and all of the many other wonderful things we did together. I miss him even more when I experience things that remind me of him. Walking by his spot at the window, thinking I heard him moving from one room to the next, seeing squirrels on the fence knowing how much he loved to bark at and chase them, and so on.

Sawyer often seemed to be my only friend and the only person who showed me love and kindness when everyone else seemed to be against me. Although I’ve got plenty of great people around me at this point, it’s still hard to be without my best friend ever and all the unconditional love he gave me during our life together. I’m still learning to trust people again, especially after being burned by so many people over the past several years. That’s even harder without my little buddy by my side.

I hate that my friendship with Sawyer ended in pain. The situations I most enjoy go well from beginning to end. If that can’t happen, I’d rather a situation start off in a rough way and get better as it goes so that it ends well. But my friendship with Sawyer began with joy the day I got him, was full of love for our life together, and ended with the greatest pain I’ve ever felt when he died. That painful ending tends to be most of what I remember these days and that makes it so hard for me to get through the day.

There’s also huge amounts of denial. Even though I understand intellectually he’s gone and isn’t coming back, emotionally that seems impossible. He must be the one dog that breaks the rule of not only dogs having short lives but also being mortal as well. I knew that his final day would come and also didn’t believe that it would come. Now I feel awful that it came and also for not believing that it did. I also feel lots of pain whenever I go through each first event without him: the first night I didn’t say good night to him, my first full day without him, my first full week without him, etc. There’s a lot of dread whenever I anticipate future moments such as my first full month without him, my first of each season without him, my first birthday without him, my first Christmas without him, etc.

Outside of my pain around losing Sawyer, I’m dealing with a lot of fear, anxiety, and depression that I thought I’d overcome long ago. All these things have been with me in some way or other for at least 10 years now. They were overshadowed by Sawyer and all the attention, affection, and love we gave each other during our time together. Now without that covering of love, all of this is coming back up. It’s extremely painful and difficult to deal with. However, unlike the past 11 years, I no longer have my little best friend to help me get through it. This is the most pain I’ve ever felt, the most difficult thing that’s ever happened to me, and by far my most painful loss. There’s nothing else in my life that I’ve cried over every day for more than a month. And he’s not here to help me get through any of it. He was here for every single thing that happened during our time together, whether good or bad, pleasant or unpleasant. Even though I have close family members and friends helping me during this time, it still seems like I’m on my own as I deal with this deep sense of emptiness and meaninglessness that’s come up so quickly, penetrated everything so deeply, and hangs over everything in my life, whether or not I’m consciously aware of it at any given moment.

There is a lot of fear around my future, my sense of self, and my identity. Who I am and how much I’ve defined myself in relation to others. Also realizing how much I leaned on Sawyer for strength, support, comfort, and feeling good about myself in the midst of a dark, cruel, mean world. Now that he’s gone, I’m wondering what that makes of me and how I’ll make it without him. I’m leaning on some close family members and friends as I work on developing that strength in myself. All the personal growth I underwent in my life occurred during my time with Sawyer. Now I’m doing my best to apply the lessons I learned (including the lessons he taught me) so I can handle life without him. I’m learning who I am without him as I work through lots of negativity. Some days are fairly easy but on many days I struggle to find meaning after losing my whole world and experiencing the sun going out in my life.

Distractions can take my mind off all of this for a while but not for long. Sooner or later, everything starts coming back in. Even on my most distracting days, the pain is still there and eventually becomes apparent once again. Distractions don’t get rid of the pain; when the distractions inevitably end (such as when I go to bed each night), the pain is still waiting for me to address it. If I continually decline to address it, it only gets worse. That’s why my most manageable days are the ones in which I work through the pain throughout the day. My most difficult days keep me constantly on the go with little to no time for myself, which tends to make everything explode out of me when I finally get some alone time.

What I’ve found helpful for healing during this time is breaking the pain up into manageable pieces and letting go of them one at a time. Sometimes that’s not possible as the pain feels absolutely overwhelming. When that happens, I’ll lie down and let it run; it always becomes more manageable after 10-15 minutes. When the pain isn’t overwhelming, I’m able to focus on certain parts of it. There’s often a desire to hold Sawyer, pet him, cuddle him, pick him up, snuggle him, be around him, etc. Along with that comes pain that I can’t do any of that anymore. I’ll let that desire and the accompanying pain be there until they run out. There’s a lot of fear over what will happen to me now and how my life will go without my best buddy getting me through the hard times and creating a lot of the good times. I can let that fear run out. I also let run out the anger and frustration at the fact that dogs live such short lives which often end by a one-way trip to the vet. I’ll also work through the anger and frustration at the vets who took Sawyer’s life and even Sawyer himself for leaving me, having lots of health issues, giving us just a few more days together instead of a week when I asked him to hold on a while longer, and giving us just 11 years together instead of many more like plenty of other humans get with their animal friends. Then I might feel a lot of guilt over things I did to Sawyer or didn’t do for him; I’ll let that come up and run its course. This also applies to the guilt I feel about feeling all those frustrations, especially the ones I feel toward Sawyer. I do my best to let all of that run out as it comes up so I don’t get overwhelmed by it all.

When I’m deeply focused and feeling relatively good, I can let multiple emotions come up and run out at the same time (such as anger and fear or depression and anxiety). However, when the emotions are too strong or I feel too upset, I’ll focus on whichever emotion seems to have the most energy behind it. I’ll let that emotion run until it’s all gone for the time being or until it’s lessened enough for another emotion to come up for release.

Sometimes I’ll sit or lie down and let the tears run, whether it’s a slight tearing up, heavy sobbing, or something in between. Music has been incredibly helpful for bringing on the tears during this time. Sometimes simply listening to a moving song is enough. When it’s not, singing along almost always does the trick; even if I break down in the middle of the song, I’ll keep singing it through the tears as best as I can until it’s over. A lot of songs that I already loved and made me cry even before losing Sawyer now make me cry even harder and even more easily. I recently listened to “You Are My Sunshine”, which I’ve heard a lot before this year. The first time I listened to it after Sawyer’s death, I cried profusely; I cried even more when I sang it to Sawyer next to his spot in the backyard. Music helps me find different areas within me that need to be healed, areas that I may otherwise miss. I’ll find one of those areas and work on it repeatedly until it seems like it’s good to go. Then I’ll do the same with a new area. Sometimes I’ll focus on the same area but from different angles. I’ll clean out the pain from one angle (anger) and then switch to another angle (depression) as my mood changes. That’s often how I find an area that I thought was good to go but actually needs more attention.

Here are some other songs I’ve listened to and sang a lot this past month to help me bring up and work through sadness: “Photographs and Memories”, “Time in a Bottle”, “Saying Goodbye”, “We’ve Got It All”, “Time of Your Life”, “We’ve Got Tonight”, “Just One Person”, “Gary Come Home”, “Believe Me”, “Save Tonight”, “Bridge over Troubled Water”, “Oo-De-Lally”, “What a Wonderful World”, “Remember Me”, “These Are The Days Of Our Lives”, and “The Goodbye Song”.

I also work on letting my frustration run out. Frustration and even anger can come up when I see people living happily with their pets, spouses, families, and other things I wish I had right now. Instead, I’m still dealing with the loss of my best friend ever and wondering why I don’t get to enjoy what so many other people have.

A lot of that frustration comes up when someone says they “know what it’s like” or “know how I feel”. Nobody knows what it’s like to be me just as I don’t know what it’s like to be anybody else. Even if someone else has lost a beloved dog or other animal friend, their pain is still different than mine. They’re not me and they didn’t have the relationship with Sawyer that I did; even those who spent as much time with Sawyer as I did still related to him in their own special ways, so their pain is different than mine. Even if they are or have been in great pain from losing an animal friend, why would that make me feel better? Why would I find comfort in knowing that other people are (or were) also hurting tremendously? I don’t. All that does is make me feel worse. I also feel worse and frustrated when someone says that this pain will never go away. Again, they don’t know what it’s like to be me or what I’ve overcome in the past, so how can they know what will or won’t be the case for me? Plus the idea of living the rest of my life with this deep, agonizing pain is unthinkable to me. I’ve already noticed a big decrease in the pain since I’ve worked through so much of it for just over a month now. I have to believe that it’ll continue going down until it eventually goes away completely. Otherwise my life will be one giant mess of misery, and I don’t want to live that way.

There’s a lot of frustration I still feel toward myself. Much of that frustration comes from guilt over not doing more for Sawyer, not doing some things that I now wish I had, leaving his care mostly to other family members, letting other folks take him outside and on walks (especially in his final few days; I so wish I’d gone on at least one walk with him once I knew his time was limited), not seeing if there was more that could have been done to give him extra life or extra quality of life toward the end, and doing some things to him that I wish I hadn’t done.

I feel lots of guilt over the healing process itself, such as crying less and crying less easily at this point in my recovery. Much of what I do when healing involves releasing guilt over feeling better and wanting to feel better, as if that’s a betrayal of Sawyer and all the love we shared. As if our shared journey would mean nothing or I’d lose his love, the lessons he taught me, and even my memories I have of him if I heal and release the pain.

Most days I’ll sit in my car for a bit while wearing earplugs and just yell as loud as I can until I feel better. This lets me get out my frustration so I’m not hurting myself by holding it in or hurting somebody else by taking out my feelings on them. That plus following it up with 15 minutes of letting go on the couch can turn my mood around incredibly quickly.

I’ve also found healing from going into certain fears I had about Sawyer during his life that, fortunately, never came to pass. I thought I’d fully dealt with these fears during his life but I now know I hadn’t. Whenever I would leave the house, whether it was for a big trip lasting more than a week or just a few minutes to run to the store, I had a lot of fear that Sawyer would die while I was gone and I wouldn’t be able to be there with him to say goodbye in his final moments. I was there for his final goodbye so I can let that fear run out. The same goes for fears about him running away, being kidnapped, dying a horrible death, and so on. None of that came to pass so I can let those fears and anxieties come up and run their course so I can finally be free from them.

In addition to working on releasing pain from the past, I’ve also found it helpful to release the pain of a future that won’t be. For instance, Sawyer won’t be around to see me get married, meet my future kids, watch me publish any of my books, or join me on my big road trip around the US. I’ve been doing my best to accept that there won’t be any pictures of Sawyer with my kids and he won’t be riding shotgun with me on the open road. It helps to acknowledge and accept Sawyer’s age and health issues instead of thinking of him as a perpetually young pup in stellar health. Recognizing that my idea of him didn’t always line up with reality, especially in his final few years and months, is painful but also freeing.

Lately, I’ve gotten reminders to welcome the positive emotions and experiences. Sometimes it’s hard for me to avoid pushing to the side any peace, laughter, happiness, contentment, joy, relief, or any other positive emotions that arise when I dance, visit with a friend, think of a fun memory of Sawyer, or do something else that I enjoy. Letting all the good stuff come up helps and it’s getting easier the more I work through everything.

I find it extra difficult to work through sadness and depression. Depression in particular is a huge challenge because, along with sadness, there’s not a lot of energy behind those emotions. That makes it harder for me to notice them and also know if I’m actually working through them. When there’s lots of energy behind an emotion (such as with fear or anger), it’s easy to notice them, let them run, and tell when they’ve run out or at least been reduced. It’s a lot harder to do that with sadness and depression. Plus depression and sadness both have a lot of heaviness to them that can overwhelm and drag me down, especially depression. That makes it harder to do anything, especially let go of the depression. Depression feels like some heavy cloud of dread or sense of foreboding that hangs around me and colors everything in a dark light. That’s much harder for me to handle than, say, the paralyzing grip of fear or the fire of anger.

Plus I’m used to feeling depressed after many years of that being my default state. There have been only a handful of occasions in the past few years in which my normal state was one of lightness, joy, and peace. It’s easy to default to that depressed state, especially when I’m feeling a ton of negativity and am having a hard time working through it. It feels familiar and even comfortable to an extent because it’s what I know. That’s another reason it can be hard for me to notice and work through depression. This past month has brought up a lot of old depression that I thought I’d dealt with but hadn’t actually fully released, in addition to new depression from losing Sawyer and not having him here to help me through this loss; it’s also brought up fear over not having him anymore, sadness around the idea of him being gone, frustration at losing him, etc. Things that I had mostly brushed to the side over the course of our life together. If there’s anything good about this time, it’s that all these emotions are now coming up for me to release and heal from at last. If I continue moving forward with all of that, I’ll be feeling even better overall and feeling better more consistently than I’ve ever been before. Even better than how I was feeling shortly before Sawyer’s death earlier this year and last year when I worked through a ton of negativity shortly before my birthday.

I’ve also found healing through conversations with people I trust, things I write in my morning writings, and reminders that come up as I let go. All of that plus everything else I described above has helped tremendously. I’m not out of the woods yet but I do overall feel much better than I did the first few weeks after losing Sawyer and way better than I did the first few days. This feels similar to my progression with a lot of pain that I worked through in 2020, only this pain is much deeper, much greater, and is taking much longer to work through even though I’m dedicating much more time to working through it. I do my best to take things one day at a time and even one moment at a time on the hard days. From past experience working through deep pain, I know I’ll keep feeling better as long as I keep working through it. Sawyer would want me to heal and feel good, so that’s exactly what I’ll do.

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