working deliberately – Jamie DeBree

A couple weeks ago, Athena-dog picked a fight with Apollo-dog (who tried to avoid it becoming an actual fight until it became clear he couldn’t). The hubby and I had to pull them apart, which ended up in a pretty severe injury to my left hand and forearm and hubby getting a finger torn open. Athena was bleeding from a couple bad punctures, and Apollo just got scraped up a bit – he’s got the toughest skin of us all, though his scrapes were bad enough to scab over too.

Needless to say, us humans aren’t as young as we once were, and I went out and bought a spray bottle specifically for water the next day. We’ll be using water to break up fights from here on out, at least as a first line of breaking focus. So far, it’s working to redirect Athena when she gets too crazy and wants to play (she has to heal first), and to shut down indiscriminate barking from Apollo, so I have high hopes. Shock value is something I often forget about in dog wrangling.

Anyways, we spent that Friday night at the emergency vet so Athena could get a couple staples put in her wounds, and then the human emergency room so I could get a stitch put in my arm. We were thinking more stitches as the gash was about 2 x 2 inches, but the doc said it was too deep, and closing it up would be riskier for infection than leaving it open to drain.

So, one stitch, right in the middle which I had my husband help me take out last week because it was embedded in the scab, and I knew that was going to create drama if I went in to have a nurse take it out (I just soaked the scab to soften it up and pulled a bit away so we could get to the stitch). I’m not offering that as advice on what to do should you ever end up with stitches, merely stating what I did. I’ll have the scab for awhile yet, as the gash was very deep and continues to heal.

Athena got her staples out last Friday (well, she took one out herself Thursday while I was at work, so she got one taken out Friday *eyeroll*), so now we’re just continuing to heal. It’s going to be awhile before my arm is back to normal – aside from the gash, I have some nerve and soft-tissue damage in my wrist, arm and hand, and since the flexibility doesn’t seem to be coming back, I may have to have my primary doc take a look. I got x-rays at the emergency room, but that wouldn’t show soft tissue damage, and now that the swelling is nearly all gone, it seems like there might be something else still going on there.

Of course all this happened just as I was hitting a nice stride, finishing up a book to release for my alter-ego, and looking forward to Halloween. Isn’t it interesting how the wrenches in life always seem to hit right in the thick of things, and never when it’s convenient?

Needless to say, I dropped a lot of the balls I was juggling (nearly a week with a swollen hand/wrist will force that on ya). And because I’m using relatively new workflows and routines, I didn’t have a contingency plan or anything like that. I was also working right up to the wire on deadlines, which is never smart, but I was impatient and didn’t want to slow down or stop.

Ever stubborn, I did push through with the digital book release…to no real avail, because while I got it uploaded and out there, I didn’t have the energy or hand strength to put any promotional materials together (or even blog posts, newsletters, etc). Which made pushing through kind of pointless, because no one will buy a book they don’t know is out there. The whole big push was to take advantage of the Halloween season and…well, that just didn’t happen. C’est la vie.

And then I missed the deadline for one serial novel post (one of my alter-egos) just because Athena was having some stomach issues late Thursday night, and once again, since I was right up against the deadline, there was no wiggle room to take care of her *and* get it posted on time. So, that was late.

I learned some valuable lessons over the past couple of weeks, but the biggest takeaway is…I live too close to the margins. On *everything*. And I do that partly because I’m a big procrastinator, partly because I’ve become very impatient (yes, I realize those two things are at odds with each other), and partly because I tend to know that ninety-nine percent of the time, I can make things work out like I want/need them to even if I’m right on the edge.

Or that was true, when I was younger. It’s becoming less true as I age, which makes sense, sadly. When I was younger, I could have stayed up to take care of the dog last Thursday night/Friday morning and still gotten that last serial post up, leaving three hours of sleep before work. Even a year ago that would have worked. But the last several times I’ve tried to function on three hours of sleep, my body has said “no” by simply not waking me up with the alarm. I’ve overslept and been late or nearly late every single time I tried to do that since last spring (not that I do often, but…it happens – or did).

Now four and a half hours of sleep is my absolute minimum, which is interesting considering that used to be my “normal”. Five is better. Six is optimal.

You get the idea. I need more time and more sleep to get things done now, and I really don’t get the same sort of satisfaction and exhilaration I used to from hurrying up and finishing something with just minutes to spare. Plus my body is older and not as impervious to injury any longer (and also not as quick to bounce back), which is something I need to take into consideration, even though I am working to keep it as much in working order as possible.

So, I’m going to be making some changes, forcing myself to slow down and get ahead, so that when setbacks happen, I can just roll with them and still have everything merrily rolling along. This blog post is a prime example of that – I’m writing it a week before you’ll read it, and I plan on that being my primary way of working from here on out. Not just here, but with as many things as possible.

I’ve been the hare for a long time, and I don’t think that was necessarily a bad thing in my youth. But the more mature me is definitely drawn to the tortoise life – slow, steady, and leaving plenty of time for things like sleep.

Do you live life close to the margins? Or are you more of a cautious, work-ahead sort?

Jamie DeBree

Writer | DBA | Dog Wrangler

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