2014 Begins: My Thoughts On Finding Personal Satisfaction
Happy New Year!
It’s time to begin 2014 and get some great stuff going this year!
As many of you know, I very seldom blog about anything personal. There are several reasons for this but the most obvious one is I think you read my blog for tech stuff not my thoughts on the weather. I know there are successful bloggers who do that kind of thing but it just isn’t my style. With that said, I want to warn the pure tech readers that this post will wax introspective and is deeply personal. I would encourage you to read on anyway but it’s your call.
I think we all have moments in life where we are at a crossroads. For me it was deciding to stay in my current role at Microsoft or take a new role with a broader scope across all our product lines. I believe my decision to stay in this role is the right one because of my passion for Visual Studio and TFS. All of these things were not black and white for me; and we all live with uncertainty in today’s world. This year I was lucky to have something happen to show me that there are some absolutes in this world and doing a good thing is always the right thing. I’d like to share that experience with you.
It started on Sunday night, December 29, as the new year was approaching and temperatures were near freezing. My dog, Lily, went out to the yard to take care of business but became unusually interested in one area of the fence. She kept sniffing that one area and suddenly jumped back. I just assumed it was one of the rabbits or other animals that visit from time-to-time and dismissed it. However, the next morning she focused on that same area again and this time I heard a noise on the other side of the fence. My curiosity peaked, I decided to look over the fence. This is what I found:
Freezing and cowering against the fence was an emaciated pit bull. I knew that is what Lily had been investigating the night before and this dog wouldn’t survive if left alone. Gathering up a leash I went around to the other side of my fence to find…nothing. The dog had disappeared and there is a lot of new building around my house so she could have been anywhere. Looking in many of the houses under construction the dog was nowhere to be found. I finally gave up, hoping that the dog would find a place to survive, and was walking back home when something told me to check the house directly behind mine again. She wasn’t in the house but I saw her though one of the windows and, somehow, she had arrived back at the spot I had first searched on the other side of my fence.
Then and there I found a fundamental truth for me: This dog was not going to die. That’s it. A simple irrefutable truth revealed itself to me. The dog will not die. (I’ll pause at this point for the more analytical among you to note that, yes, the dog WILL eventually die as all things do; but she will not die anytime soon if I can help it.) It took me about an hour to convince her to let me put the leash on her as I sat next to her by the fence. It took another three hours to be able to get her into a crate so I could get her to the vet. After a two day visit at the vet, which checked for any type of identification and got her up to speed on all her vaccinations, I decided to call her Maggie.
Unfortunately my current dog doesn’t play well with others so I most likely can’t keep her long term and currently have Maggie at the kennel getting fattened up and socialized with other dogs. I need to find her a home. As you may or may not know, there are two types of dog shelters out there: kill and no-kill. A “kill” shelter will euthanize a dog if they are not adopted over time whereas a “no-kill” shelter will never put a dog down unless there are extenuating circumstances. I went to one of my local no-kill shelters to see if Maggie could be placed for adoption. Sadly they only allow six pit bulls at any one time and they currently have all six slots filled. Undeterred, I am calling no-kill shelters around the area and have placed an ad on a pit rescue site:
https://pitbull.rescueme.org/Texas?14-01-03-00238
My mission is to find her a good home with loving owners who will make sure Maggie has a good life. In other words, my goal is to make sure she doesn’t die. For some reason finding an absolute in the midst of a world of uncertainty helped me achieve some measure of peace. Helping this abandoned dog made me understand that we all need to have these types of events in our lives. I found my truth just before the new year. I hope your found (or will find) yours. :)