Better Late Than Never

I usually try to write in the morning, but chaos on the home-front derailed that fairly easily.

I want to write today about SuperBetter, a game to make yourself better--from whatever physical or mental ailments you may be suffering from. SuperBetter focuses on four realms of health- physical, mental/ cognitive, emotional, and social. The game is simple--complete quests and defeat bad guys in order to meet your personal goal. It's a real-life goalsetting game played online, but your quests or tasks exist in the real world. So, I guess just the scoring is online.

Jane McGonigal (personal hero) invented this game to recover from a serious concussion. According to her, as soon as she started playing the game, she felt better. The physical pain was still there, but she was no longer suffering the depression and anxiety that the pain had been causing her.

I signed up yesterday, created my secret identity, and completed the first few tasks. The game offers packs with predesigned tasks or allows you to make up your own to fit your personal needs. This--blogging--is one of my tasks. I want to do it every day, because even when I don't feel like I have anything valuable to say, I still feel better for having said it.  

That being said, I had one of those It's a Wonderful Life moments today. I dropped the dogs off to get haircuts--early, after my alarm failed to go off and the morning was chaos, etc.-- and when I got home, I got right to working on a project that I've been stop and go on for two weeks. I have to push hard to find motivation right now, and I think I'm going through some mild depression about not going back to school this year. I know I made the right choice, but I'm struggling to reconcile that those bargain bins of school supplies in every store I go into have nothing to do with me...whew!

Anyway, I got started this morning and knocked out a big chink of work. In fact, once I got going, I really rocked it--great new idea for a segment, focused and creative. It was amazing. Then, I get the call to pick up the dogs and I realize that I haven't been up and down letting one dog in, the other out, or calming them when whatever chattering squirrel, cawing bird, or muffler-less car next door has threatened their turf.

I bring them home, they settle in, I settle in and just as I start to pick up the thread of focus--bark, bark, BARK, BARK, BARK! And for a minute I thought, "I wish I didn't have dogs!" and what's worse is I meant it. They are frustrating and irrational, they bark incessantly at the wildlife through the open windows, they make my life so much harder than it needs to be. And yet...

When I come home, they are ecstatic to see me, even if I was just outside doing yard work. When they play--one's a chaser, one's a tugger-- it always makes me smile. The only thing I ever miss when I'm on vacations is my dogs nestled up to me at night and licking my face awake in the morning.

So, as frustrating as it can be, I would never, ever give up my dogs, not in a million years and not for a million dollars...

But maybe I put them down for naps so I can get some work done!