First and Foremost - FEED A CAT FOR CHRISTMAS! Thank you KRISTIN and DARRIN!!! What can I say about these two? Oh.... mucho. Kris is my BOO. And Darrin is hers. :) Both great peeps, have been with me through thick and thin after all these years. Shelter builders, kitten finders, vet payers, hand holders. Thanks guys, I appreciate it very much. You will have fed over 100 cats today.
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Taken this morning -
Feeding Kitties on Central Park - 5:04 a.m. |
RESCUE:
But no pic. (later). But
he is a HANDSOME boy. If you will recall, there is a guy by the name of
Max who migrated from Boston to attend the University of Rochester, bought a
house recently, moved in with his Dalmation dog - OLLIE, and found me, somehow,
on Facebook, and offered to foster a cat for me, any cat, right off the
street.
I wanted to share something
that Max shared on Facebook, just to give you an idea about this guy - I don't
think I am breaking any code here, he shared it, and I am in awe of his
philosophy on life, and his tender heart. This is the same guy that
fostered our big old Buddy cat. Buddy
was recently adopted along with Mara and Pebbles. Max did a great job with Buddy, acclimating
him to Ollie as well.
This new cat – who I’ve fed, and the neighbors have fed all summer
– is white and black, just like Ollie, the Dalmation dog. I am naming him Griffin, Griff for
short. As all of you know, I try to name
the cats after the first letter of the street they are rescued on. Most times, the cats names are changed when
they are adopted. Griffin will
hopefully get into clinic this morning for neuter, shots and combo test, to the
tune of $100+ He will then go to Max
this weekend. Fingers crossed he likes
Ollie!
Back to Max, here is the post he made recently – I hope you like
it!
I’m not normally a big sharer, but I wish I
could share what I know now with myself about 6 months ago. For me, the past
few years have been a time of growth but also a time of disappointment and
uncertainty. Much of this centered around my career, my future, and graduate
school, but also overlapped with my personal life. Earlier this year, I was
disappointed to find out that I did not get into any of the few Ivy
League/“prestigious” PhD programs I had applied to. I thought that as someone
at the top of my class at Harvard, I was guaranteed to get into these programs,
or even that I had a right to, and that not getting into them was a profound
personal failure. When this news came to me I was upset with myself and felt a
deep lack of direction- not sure if I should wait a year to reapply, choose a
different program, or even do something else entirely. While I don’t know why I
did not get into these programs, I think that my few years in the corporate
world may have had something to do with it. Nonetheless, I went to my remaining
interviews- my last, at the University of Rochester, was more because I wanted
to meet a professor there whose work I thought was interesting, and I did not
seriously envision myself going there for school. However, when I got there and
had a chance to meet and speak with the professor I knew, I was surprised to
find that they had just started working on exactly what I had always wanted to
work on- research on aging in the longest-lived mammal in the world, the
Bowhead whale. I left that interview weekend with a renewed sense of interest,
but still did not really see myself going there for a PhD. Wasn’t I too good for
the University of Rochester? Shouldn’t I be somewhere more prestigious? Would
people I knew, or even people I didn’t know, question my decision?
Over
time, though, I thought more about what my priorities in life really were. If I
asked high school Max what he wanted to do some day, wasn’t this exactly what
he would have said? Didn’t I try to work on this exact project in college, only
to find that it wasn’t feasible at the time? Didn’t I, underneath it all, still
really want to do this, looking for opportunities to pursue this work wherever
I could? High school me didn’t even have any desire or intention to get into
Harvard, and certainly wasn’t expecting to get in. That Max knew what he
wanted, and I know what he would have told me to do now.
Maybe
a more “prestigious” program was what I thought I was “supposed” to do, but
ultimately I decided that I wanted to live my life, not somebody else’s. I
couldn’t let my circumstances of the past few years lead me to live a life I
really did not want to lead. Right at the deadline, I made the decision to
enroll at the University of Rochester, and finally actually pursue the goal
that I had been putting all of my work toward the whole time.
It’s
amazing how over time, we can almost lose sight of what we really want even as
we claim to be working toward it. When the opportunity we have always been
looking for comes along, we may not even recognize it at first because of how
distracted we have become. Superficial concerns like reputation, the opinions
of others, and chasing prestige and respect can take over. While these things
can provide a fleeting sense of pride or admiration from others, I’ve found
that they are really empty accomplishments and don’t bring happiness. For the
first time in years, I feel a clear sense of direction and purpose in my life,
and I strongly feel that I made the right choice. I am very happy with where my
life is right now. I don’t know what the future may hold, but right now I feel
like I am exactly where I should be, doing what I am meant to, and that is all
I can ask for in life.
Sometimes
it takes all of your plans falling apart to realize that these things were not
really what you wanted, and that you were clinging onto them because they were
safe, obvious, and predictable. I think that I, like many people, have a hard
time envisioning unexpected possibilities in the future, and tend to cling on
to people, places, and opportunities that I know because these seem like the
best and safest options. Things can seem very dark when those safe and
predictable options let you down, but you never know what opportunities life
will drop at your feet. Sometimes it takes something seemingly good falling to
pieces for something better to take its place, and for you to make a change or
take a leap that you may not have taken otherwise.
If there is anything I have learned from this
experience, it is that failure and loss are not always bad, even though that
may not be clear at the time. Don’t hold on to people, places, and careers that
don’t really fulfill you just because you think you will never find something
better. Whether you are unhappy with the state of our country, your personal
relationships, or your career, all of which are feelings I have had recently,
remember that these situations are not permanent and something even better than
you could have imagined might very well take their place. It may take loss, or
letting go, for you to open your eyes and have the freedom to see those better
options for what they really are, and to take that bold step into something
new. Embrace your failures and your successes, your losses and your gains, and
understand that they are all important parts of building a great life.
Have a great day!
"Live as if you were to die tomorrow.
Learn as if you were to live forever."
