Journal

My inbox sits at 25 emails this morning, which is better than it was yesterday but still enough to make me twitchy. It’s a little reminder that my routines are off, and that we’ve been working at the edge of burnout here in Casa Del Brain Jar.

It’s also a reminder that I won’t bounce back automatically, just ’cause I want too. Getting back to writing will take effort, as will clearing email and getting back on top of all my other projects.

One of the downsides of working from home–particularly a small flat like ours–is the potential for the space you work and the space where you deal with the big things life throws your way bleeding into one another. The little distractions you embrace to cope with loss or distract yourself during periods of high stress linger around after the cause of those behaviours is gone.

The housework you let slide because you didn’t have the bandwidth is still there, needing to be done, as you try to kickstart your work brain and force it to wrangle a list of project that have been backing up.

Yesterday, I dealt with the deadlock by relocating and changing environments. Working from home wasn’t happening, so I buggered off to the local food court and did a quick 1,500 words before picking up some groceries.

Today, that’s unlikely to be an option for a handful of reasons, but starting is often the hardest part and I’ve cleared space on the writing desk that was used as a pig hospice for the last two moths. With luck, that will help things run smoother than they did yesterday

I didn’t really have pets as a kid. Not the kind who were around long enough that you remember them. My dad kept snakes for a time, and those terrified me. We had guinea pigs when I was three, and a budgie for a short while, but the phase where pets and my life intersected was largely done by the time I turned seven.

When my partner and I started living together, she brought her guinea pigs with her. They occupied a corner of the flat and interacted with one another, interrupted quiet writing days at home with demands for food and attention. They were a constant source of distraction and joy.

I told myself I wasn’t a pet person, but they suckered me in anyway. There were noses to boop and personalities to learn and a surprising amount of affection for a critter that only weighs a kilogram.

We lost Pepe, one of the pigs, last Friday. He’d gone in to the vets for an ear infection back at the start of June, and they’d noticed there were problems with his teeth. We tried to fix it, and then tried to fix the fix, and it gradually became apparent he wasn’t bouncing back the way we’d hoped. His pain kept getting worse, and so it was time to say goodbye.

And I was not a pet person. I hadn’t ever had to say goodbye to a sick pet before, especially not after two months of working to keep the little guy alive. I’d certainly never been around a pet for two straight years, getting to know their personality and love them, making them part of my life.

Pepe wasn’t the pig I expected to care for the most. My partner got her other pig right as we started dating, which meant I got to bond with him as a little tyke. Pepe was already heading into middle age when he moved in; he was quieter than the other pig, more gentle in his affection.

He won me over, in that first year. Partially it was the way he’d nuzzle your neck like a tiny vampire, or the joy he took when he’d jump in his hay tray and wait for fresh hay to get delivered right on top of him. His love of ear rubs, and the effort it took learning how to rub his ears the right way.

Partially it was just the fact that he was even-tempered and sweet, always polite about letting us know when the time for pats was over and it was time to go back to the cage.

Losing him caught me harder than I expected. I kind of fumble around the flat, trying to get work done and failing. Not really sure how to write around the big lump of grief that settled in. And I’m kinda okay with that at the moment, while I’m sorting through all the feelings and our lives are reconfiguring to fill the spaces filled by both him and the care he needed in his final weeks.

He was a good pig, and we loved him.

A new dress shop has opened down by our local pizza place, and yesterday I noticed a giant ball of carefully manicured fur hanging out by the entrance while stopping in to pick up dinner. I found myself wondering why a dress shop needs a dog, and the answers I came up with will probably be the seed of a new story down the line.

The photo really doesn’t do justice to the epic, real-life fuzziness, but it’s hard to get a good shot when you’re hungry and the pepperoni is calling you.

We’re in week five or six of caring for sick pets here at Camp Brain Jar, transferring our attention from the first sick guinea pig to the second, who is having things much worse than his younger brother.

The stress is starting to take its toll–I spent a good chunk of my day having the self-care-isn’t-easy-and-it-isn’t-just-indulgence talk with myself, trying to shake off the increasingly-negative headspace that’s settling in. Doing my best to ward off the temptation to do things that are mildly fulfilling and easy, rather than legitimately-good-work and requiring effort.

I’d be tempted to drop a quote from Stephen Pressfield’s The War of Art about shadow careers and real work here, but I fear the book is in storage and its got that weird mix of 50% helpful advice about mindset, 50% bug-fuck crazy magical thinking about art curing cancer that makes me ish-ish about recommending it.