Less Hustle More Coffee

Poor baby. He did well yesterday. He happily went with me, jumped in the car, and probably thought we were going to Nana’s. But instead we went to the vet. I felt guilty seeing him so happy, knowing he’d be losing some body parts soon.

We picked him up and surprisingly he acts as if nothing has happened. He was so incredibly excited to see us. He is not to be jumping around a lot and has a cone to wear when we are not with him and today and tomorrow will have to wear it more if he begins bothering the site. He’s not to be taking a lot of stairs or doing a lot of jumping. We worried about the sofa or bed, but honestly he is so tall that it takes him such little effort to get up there.

He is more chill right now as the meds are still in him a bit. Sometimes he stares out and zones out. Not much but it was kinda funny this morning watching him just stare out at nothing when he is normally so busy. Most of the time he is normal. We have been giving him half portions of food while those anesthetic meds are still in him so he doesn’t get sick. I’m feeding him a little more normal today but like half here and half there – spread out.

George will get up this morning and we will give him a sedative and a pain pill. Doc said ok to give both this morning. One settles him and one is for pain. We are doing this together this morning. That is always a safe bet to let ONE do it or both do at the same time together so that they don’t get over medicated.

I’m off today to take care of Dexter. It’s not an ideal time for work for me to be off. It’s very busy. It’s month end. It’s quarter end. And everyone is needy and there have been some issues/mistakes from other areas where we’ve really had to spend a lot of extra time trying to fix things. This is really impacted me. It’s ok. Others have had to fix my mistakes before but geez the timing sucks. It is what it is. But we had to have had to wait to have his operation done til he was old enough and then we had to wait for an opening in the vet schedule, but it had to be done in time so we he can heal and we can go through the registering and testing to be boarded for the Camp Bow Wow. This is supposedly the best one where they can interact with other dogs and not just sit in a room for 9 days. This is going to be hard on us all but we are going to have to all get over it. Anyway, timing was not the best but we had to do the best we could.

Work. So next week and the next three weeks, will be nose to the grind stone. I will have to work a bit over I think to get it done but it’s ok I’ve had to miss a bit yesterday getting him to the vet. I do have some hours still in my “bucket” but only about 3. Anyway I promised I would make up yesterday’s time so I will even though I’d already had make up time made up in advance in my “bucket”. The goal here is to try to find work life balance at *almost 60*. At this point in life you have less energy and it takes longer to get things done, plus having additional parental care duties, and additional needs for yourself at that age with your own physical and mental strength – something has to give. And I was giving way too much time working more than I should for this stage of life. I don’t mind flexing some for quarter end responsibilities as there have been times in the other months where at work I took phone calls from Mom, made Mom’s doc appts as that was when they were open, looked up recipes on the internet, or try to find restaurants to go to, etc. So I can flex some knowing I’ve done that. I try to make it as fair as possible and make sure I get in the hours and have proper work/life balance. We all know in today’s culture the work life balance is expected to be off balance. I’ll be glad when laws protect people from working too much. Sadly we probably won’t have that happen b/c most people don’t want to work at all these days according to the hiring situation out there.

In the mean time, I’m glad to have today off. I intend to get laundry done, do housework, open packages we’ve received from Amazon. George has an old high school buddy coming over tomorrow to pick him up to go out to eat and so I need to give the house some attention too.

Also. I want to do a recording for the next video and get it uploaded and scheduled. Hopefully for tomorrow morning. We’ll see. Speaking of videos.

Here’s What’s Going to Happen to the Vlog Channel

Videos. I decided to go ahead and begin threading in some of the newer intentional ways of doing my vlog, NOW, not waiting until January. The last video flopped the big one. It’s a truly a sign that my usual audience is in no way interested in seeing my very late and past due postings from the past from my iPhone library. And why would they? I’m even tired of seeing them at this point. As I worked on this latest video it just didn’t feel right. I thought about it in my mind a lot yesterday and prayed over it. And the idea of threading it through with more current content was my answer.

So here’s the deal.

1. I’m going to do an immediate video of “what’s going to be changing” with the vlog over the next few videos. So those few that do watch, lol, won’t be totally confused.
2. I’m going to thread some current intentionally filmed and helpful videos in with a few old videos until I get to the point of where we adopted Dexter.
3. I will introduce the new logo at that point on YouTube.
4. I thought of several videos I could do immediately for current content. For example: 1) “It’s October and time to get ready for the holidays and here’s how I plan in advance.” 2) Gift Ideas for the Holidays 3) How to Choose your 2023 Calendar. 4) Goal setting for the New Year. 5) Five apps that I use to help me be organized 6) How to Get out the door quickly in the mornings! See where I’m going here? I am getting so many ideas. I want the video to be helpful. I am still being me and sharing what we are doing but just videoing more intentionally while including Dexter and George. How does that sound??? Still a lifestyle vlog, still will have what’s goin on with us in there in the background but it’ll just be more useful for a wider audience and more intentional.
5. I will scan through my library though and pull out any additional video since Dexter that I think you all would love and do a catch up video or two in that respect (Sybil’s idea – thank you) in b/w some of the more helpful videos.
6. I still plan to share more current videos of what is going on as an extension of the vlog in additional to the more helpful/interesting content. For example if we go on a trip I can video that, or do a household project I can tell the story of that.
7. Just making a seventh bullet point here to say that the above changes excite me so much!

Looking back. So the whole video thing was awesome the first year. We were during Covid and even though I worked full time we had more time at home. I learned iMovie, Final Cut Pro, basics of YouTubing, and adding music from Epidemic Sound, and learning to use Canva as a source for helping add a level up to the videos, learning my camera, learning about lighting. Some of these things are still in learning mode but I’ve learned so much. This whole thing has been an experiment.

Then Mom happened….. and took up about a year and a half of our weekends throwing me about six months behind, where we moved her twice, helped her sell her house, and then helped to get her set up (at our house first and then her house when it was built) and took her to places to order things and pick out things, hanging things, putting things together (patio furniture) on top of grocery and doc appts, and take her to church and sometimes just take her out to eat or go eat with her there. She still wants to shop for a few more items but it’s calmed down some. Now we are mainly just seeing to her needs with grocery items and doc appointments for her and vet and grooming appointments for Fancy, eating with her some and taking her out and taking her to church. Yeah it’s settled some but it’s still an overwhelming responsibility at times when you work FT on top of a 40 to an hour commute.

She will probably tell you we haven’t and don’t give her enough time but if you saw how much of our spare time we have given and what we give, she still gets a huge chunk.

For example tomorrow I’m gone all day with pedi appts for us, out to eat, Lowe’s, Dollar Store, Fancy’s grooming take and pick up, and taking Mom home, back out to get all her groceries and take them back to her house and probably get her a salad for dinner from Zaxby’s or something, so yeah I’ll be gone all day and then Sunday is church day and we’ll pick her up and be gone until 1:00 or so and then we will have to get our own groceries and the afternoon will be gone and we’ll not get much done on our own list. So I’m happy to have today off to try and get housework done, laundry done, and any personal stuff I need to do.

Bottom line – I just got behind because of the above, in doing a chronologically based vlog . And it’s fine. It’s just not going to work for me anymore or for any of us. I will never be able to keep up and I don’t want to skip time and start filming currently and miss a chunk of our life… and it wasn’t always interesting anyway.

I was making some progress here lately in catching up. Although slowly, but it’s time to make an immediate pivot with the vlog before I have to completely lose/ditch my current audience and start over. The videos simply have to be more helpful, valuable, and interesting to others. People don’t want to see what happened to us months ago, lol. We are not that interesting of people even on a current basis and we are not doing anything interesting much. And all I do is sit and whine about being behind and not having time. The pressure to catch the vlog up is overwhelming and I increasingly feel like a failure. So yeah, even if it takes a while to get in the rhythm with the newer way of doing things with videos, I will be happier I think. Everyone wins as they will hold some value to someone on sharing things that help me.

Bless you those that were truly interested in our life though and what we did or watched the videos simply for my sake. I love you! But it’s time to change. And I’m excited about it. It feels right. As much as I like to plan, I’ll enjoy planning and strategizing and videoing!

Do you think the new way of doing videos will be more helpful? Do you have any ideas you’d like for me to do on how I do things?