The Turtle and the Unicorn
It's a matter of perception, like everything else. I could tag it more appropriately as obsession, but then the compulsion aspect would kick in and I would be compelled to fix it. So I'll call it a habit.
I am addicted to goals. A junkie of to-do lists, action packed days, and chaos to meet the ocean of needful souls popping up everywhere around me. Like all of us I perpetuate these on both a micro and macro scale. I set up a complex set of tasks to achieve them and I chew away like a crack headed beaver nibbling my own way to building the Taj Mahal. I suppose I would have to pick out the words of "driven, determined and dreamer" should I be reduced to a tag line on a head stone. It is who I am.
When I decided I was going to go to veterinary school about 25 years ago, after having just graduated college in a field with an available job pool of about two options I knew I had a long and unlikely attainable road ahead of me. My resolution to the dilemma; I vowed to only read veterinary textbooks until I got into vet school. Every available second of my other life was dedicated to building my own knowledge base through a book.
When I decided to become an entrepreneur I cancelled my subscriptions to Martha Stewart, Country Living, and my last guilty pleasure: Elle. It hurt bad. I did after all attend a military academy and those 14 years of being a drag queen stuck in khakis left me yearning for red nails and manicured eye brows.
Religiously and doggedly I pine cover to cover through Inc, FastCompany, and Entrepreneur. Month after month. Year after year. If the turtle was ever intended to win the race it will be another decade at another attempt to force an action into a plan that is so slow in evolving everyone else mocks or gives up on you. My legacy left to my own devices and obsession and maybe some intangible dream that only I believe in?
Beta tests, hunches, risk and personal sacrifice. They are all here in tiny specks of a life threaded on a compulsion and a new day to try once more to build something, do something, and be something no one else sees as possible, plausible, or profitable.
The next time you pass by some obsessive compulsive ask them if they need a water break? Or a hand? They might just be Sisyphus pushing their imaginary self-imposed boulder up their own hill of dreams.
To all of the dreams that might have been unanswered and overlooked.. here's looking at you kids.
Weasely. From cast away and deformed.. to rock star and unstoppable.
Paisely, who came to us from the Humane Society with severe mammary enlargement that was ulcerated, painful, and might have been the cause for being euthanized. After a finger biting failed attempt at a spay we could not do she found her happy ever after with out friend Jenn. Here she is on day one with us, and 8 months later: perfect.
Mumford, rescued by Jewel's House Animal Sanctuary in DC from NYC, he has come from this photo to a happy (almost perfectly healthy) very grateful miracle.
I am addicted to goals. A junkie of to-do lists, action packed days, and chaos to meet the ocean of needful souls popping up everywhere around me. Like all of us I perpetuate these on both a micro and macro scale. I set up a complex set of tasks to achieve them and I chew away like a crack headed beaver nibbling my own way to building the Taj Mahal. I suppose I would have to pick out the words of "driven, determined and dreamer" should I be reduced to a tag line on a head stone. It is who I am.
When I decided I was going to go to veterinary school about 25 years ago, after having just graduated college in a field with an available job pool of about two options I knew I had a long and unlikely attainable road ahead of me. My resolution to the dilemma; I vowed to only read veterinary textbooks until I got into vet school. Every available second of my other life was dedicated to building my own knowledge base through a book.
When I decided to become an entrepreneur I cancelled my subscriptions to Martha Stewart, Country Living, and my last guilty pleasure: Elle. It hurt bad. I did after all attend a military academy and those 14 years of being a drag queen stuck in khakis left me yearning for red nails and manicured eye brows.
Religiously and doggedly I pine cover to cover through Inc, FastCompany, and Entrepreneur. Month after month. Year after year. If the turtle was ever intended to win the race it will be another decade at another attempt to force an action into a plan that is so slow in evolving everyone else mocks or gives up on you. My legacy left to my own devices and obsession and maybe some intangible dream that only I believe in?
Beta tests, hunches, risk and personal sacrifice. They are all here in tiny specks of a life threaded on a compulsion and a new day to try once more to build something, do something, and be something no one else sees as possible, plausible, or profitable.
The next time you pass by some obsessive compulsive ask them if they need a water break? Or a hand? They might just be Sisyphus pushing their imaginary self-imposed boulder up their own hill of dreams.
To all of the dreams that might have been unanswered and overlooked.. here's looking at you kids.
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| Queen, our latest case. Foreign body, EPI, and cachexia. Happy ending to follow soon. |
Weasely. From cast away and deformed.. to rock star and unstoppable.
Paisely, who came to us from the Humane Society with severe mammary enlargement that was ulcerated, painful, and might have been the cause for being euthanized. After a finger biting failed attempt at a spay we could not do she found her happy ever after with out friend Jenn. Here she is on day one with us, and 8 months later: perfect.
Mumford, rescued by Jewel's House Animal Sanctuary in DC from NYC, he has come from this photo to a happy (almost perfectly healthy) very grateful miracle.
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| His shelter photo. |
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| Arrival at the clinic. |
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| Jarrettsville vet photo 4 days after arrival. |
Poppy, a feral kitten full of lice with her ulna broken and sticking out of her leg. Miraculously her leg is healing and she is walking on it.
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| Poppy at arrival |
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| today |
One of the almost 70 kittens and cats JVC helped in 2016... about a dozen last ditch dog cases.. and a team of people who believe that anything is possible.
Starting small, helping every single soul we meet.. it is the reality of this dreamer and the best way we can inspire the big dreams and the unicorns.
Who am I? Well, the dreamer, the do-gooder, and the glass half way.. well,, we already established all of this.
I am a small animal veterinarian in Harford County Maryland. You can find me at the clinic, Jarrettsville Veterinary Center, on YouTube, on Twitter @FreePetAdvice, and if you have a pet question, or, are a pet person please join us at Pawbly.com.
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