An update on the Paws and Reflect book
An update on the Paws and Reflect book
A series of (fortunate) events finally pushed me to make some changes to prioritize writing my book. Though I’m only a week into removing all social media apps from my phone and reformatting my manuscript document, I feel amazing. I’m at nearly 80 draft pages with more momentum than I’ve felt in months!
Thanks to a random assortment of stimuli for inspiring this “hey let’s actually Do The Thing” shift, including:
The Crane Wife by CJ Hauser
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
R. F. Kuang on the Conversations with Tyler Podcast, who led me to skim Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport with an open mind
Clean by James Hamblin
Not The End of the World by Hannah Ritchie
Google Drive’s offline mode
Cute emojis that make me feel organized when I use them as bullets in my to-do lists
Two days camping in the middle of nowhere among birds and deer and turkeys at a Florida prairie preserve
Sean, of course
What this means for my social media use
This social media community was exactly what I needed earlier in my journey with Scout. When I was knee-deep in technical training, posting videos every day, chatting with people in similar positions, sharing the highs and lows with each other… I can only imagine that our progress would look much different (much worse, I think) without Instagram.
So many of those things are still incredibly valuable — especially the encouragement and validation that can come from a group aligned on core values and living similar experiences!
But as time has gone on my interests have broadened. And the truth is I’m doing a lot “less” with Scout in the ways that I used to. Structured training sessions are few and far between. We just live together nowadays, most of the time, something that was my professed goal for years. Live well together.
Now that we’re doing that regularly, it’s not that I no longer care about the nitty gritty training. The nitty gritty training is a huge part of what got us here! But it’s so much more about the emotional arc and the overall journey and so much less about specific “here’s how we use reward markers” and “this is my exact command criteria”. Because if I’m honest, my exact reward markers might definitely have been an optimization that made our life better… but marginally so. They weren’t the gamechanger, they weren’t the thing that made it all click together.
Those were bigger concepts about understanding Scout and advocating for her and taking care of myself, too.
So it’s not that I don’t still value this platform, or that I don’t love connecting with you and your dogs more directly. I do. But I have never wanted to focus on something so much as I want to focus on writing this book. It’s been my dream, but I’m afraid I haven’t been giving it proper dream treatment.
I hope scaling back on social media will help me save my capacity for deeper, long-form writing — and “store up” thoughts to fully contemplate (rather than halfway talking about a topic in a story share, meeting my initial impulse to address it, and then forgetting to spend greater time reflecting).
In practice, I:
Deleted all social media apps off of my phone
But kept the accounts and can still log in to check on friends and post occasionally from my web browser!
Have no set “rules” about when I can and can’t be on Instagram and still have a backlog of drafts I’m excited to share at some point, so I won’t be completely disappearing
Will probably be briefly posting and then exiting back out when the mood really strikes instead of spending lots of time mindlessly scrolling through
Have been cutting down my social media use since moving into the van, so maybe it won’t be that drastic of a change, but it felt worth giving a heads up so as to not be a total ghost!
Am ultimately just trying to be increasingly intentional about how much of my day is spent looking at my phone when there is so much else to do
(I realize the irony of embedding a social media post in my post about moving away from social media, at least for the time being. But old habits die hard. And how lovely does Scout look in front of that beach sunset?)
What this means for this Paws and Reflect blog
I still plan on posting few times a month here. I have a huge backlog of draft articles I’d love to get out — and I might publish some manuscript sections for supporters first to put them out in the world and see how they feel. The bulk of my effort will be going towards the book, though, because it’s high time I stop putting it off and letting my imposter syndrome / other obligations / excuses excuses excuses get in the way.
I am absolutely still here to chat dogs and life and favorite books and anything else that comes up. Email is the best way to reach me for the next while!
Thank you
Thank you thank you thank you for talking dogs and life with me. And for loving Scout.
Now go play with your dog if you’re able!!