If you’ve ever been tasked with a whole bunch of responsibilities you’ve probably developed some kind of mechanism to determine what needs to be accomplished first. I like to use the phrase, “What is the brightest burning fire?” I tackle those first.
Right at this moment it feels like everything in my life is burning. And I can’t see a way to choose what to focus on. I’m hoping by writing it out I’ll gain some perspective and find my path.
If you follow me on any social media at all then you know my cat George has been very ill for the last two weeks. We’ve been in and out of the emergency vet, my vet, and he’s been hospitalized for days. His bladder ruptured so he had to have emergency surgery. I have him home now, but that is super challenging too with his treatment. He’s taking 4 different medications that are all not at the same time. He needs IV fluids under the skin everyday. I’ve tried to do it myself the last two days and the attempts were very unsuccessful. Today I managed to stab myself in the knuckle with his IV needle so now my knuckle is swollen and bruised. His bladder and urethra are having spasms off and on due to all the trauma, so he leaks urine at times when he’s sleeping. So I’ve got every piece of furniture covered in plastic and I’m washing blankets twice a day. I’m not sleeping because I’m watching him. I haven’t been able to exercise for the last week because I’m taking him back and forth from the emergency vet to the regular vet.
The big project at work that I’ve leading/managing has ran into one delay after another. None of them have even been remotely my fault, but we are now WEEKS behind. It was supposed to ready to go-live on Monday (7/2) and we literally just received word just yesterday that I can only now start testing it. I’ll be lucky if we are ready to go by 8/1 at this point. I chose the dates for my project with intentionality because other big things follow it. I have other things in my normal day-to-day job that need to take precedence. Now I need to do it all, together. There will be many, many long days ahead with work.
Because I need one more big thing….I’m moving in 3 weeks. Guess who hasn’t even started packing up her apartment due to all of the above?
George has cost me thousands of dollars I wasn’t expecting (or prepared) to spend.
And lastly, to top it all off, because I have had all this extreme stress and I’m not keeping my body “normal” my heart condition is flaring up. So I’m dizzy and prone to passing out frequently.
So here is where I am. How do I manage it all by myself? George comes first, obviously, but how do I keep up all the treatment and such that he needs AND maintain everything I need to do with my job? I need to be the one doing my packing because I’m weeding things out as I go. What is the answer?
I’m not writing this post for sympathy or pity. I’m writing it for clarity. I need to find a path. I need to find a way to look at it that I don’t see everything burning. So. Without any doubt you can bet as I’m doing some work today that I’ll be doing my normal type-A self…trying to write a flowchart to make all this work.
TODAY I LOVE: Kacey Musgraves’ new album Golden Hour
