A Self Care Guide For Overachievers and Dog Owners

It’s been an intense week (too many things vying for attention in my brain), and I feel a little depleted.

So instead of pretending I have something profound to say (like I usually do 🙄), I’m sharing this post from about two years ago, about the importance of self-care (and dogs).

My language challenge may be over, but other than that, not much has changed since then: Shiloh is still (again) shedding, so my apartment still looks like a polar bear hair salon. It is still hot outside (although, mercifully, not 42 degrees Celsius yet). And most importantly, I still stand by my own advice re self-care (although it doesn’t mean I follow it).

I'm brushing Shiloh’s hair on the terrace. She sheds a lot these days, making my apartment look like a polar bear hair salon. I am determined to change this.

But mostly, brushing my dog’s hair is my new mindfulness practice.

Maya is playing with dry laundry next to me. She takes my sports bra off the laundry rack and puts it on, then runs into the house, and comes back with the bra full. "Look!" she says very excited.

"You have breasts?"

"Yes! I put avocados in there!"

I continue brushing the dog while she covers Shiloh's face with sticky labels that she brought from the kitchen along with the avocados. When she gets tired, she wipes her forehead and says: "I'm hot. When we have we have breasts, we sweat a lot."

Truthfully, when it's 42 degrees Celsius outside, we sweat a lot regardless of the amount of breasts that we possess, but whatever.

"You can take them off. You know that, right?" I offer.

"NO! They're attached to my body!" She indignantly emphasizes the first syllable of the word 'body' as if I've just invaded her personal space.

"They're avocados," I say, not taking my eyes or my brush off my dog’s fur.

Mostly I'm glad that I'm fully present here for this wonderful conversation. Because lately, I have been a little too far away in my head and always listening to some foreign language content in my earphones.

Washing the dishes and listening. Making meatballs and listening. Not brushing my dog’s hair and listening. Thinking about sorting the laundry and listening. On the one hand, it makes sense because I mostly only have time to learn by listening. On the other hand, that was a little too much listening.

My problem is that I dive all in and I don't know how to get out.

I do think that when you’re learning a language, you have to overwhelm your system a little bit.

I don’t believe in overwhelming your system too much, but clearly, I don’t know how to avoid it.

My brain never told me to take a break. It doesn’t do that, apparently. I only realized it one evening when, instead of reaching for my phone and my earphones to listen to yet another something, I caught myself reaching for the dog brush. When my brain tried to convince us to take our earphones with us, my body refused to cooperate.

We couldn’t stomach the idea of listening to any words in any language. Nor could we remember anymore what got us so excited when we started this challenge. What's so fun about languages anyway? I mean, it's just words upon words upon words upon words. And then some more words.

Dogs help you drop back into your body. Plus, dogs don't talk. They understand all the languages and no language at all.

By the way, Shiloh in Hebrew means "a gift to him." (shai 'gift' and lo 'to him'). She came with the name but the name is fitting because it was Yannai who’d begged for a dog for two years before we finally got her.

And here she is now, a gift to all of us, helping me deal with my tired and overactive brain.

One time, when I was paying too much attention to Shiloh, Maya said, "You love Shiloh more than me!"

I replied, without taking my face out of my dog's furry neck, "But she's so fluffy!!"

Maya: "Well, it's not MY fault that I'm not fluffy!"

When your child cries out "It's not MY fault that I'm not fluffy!" maybe it’s a sign that something is wrong with your parenting approach.

Dogs are very versatile too. When you’ve brushed all the loose hair out (or when your dog begins to hide under the couch at the sight of the brush), there are several other ways they can help your brain relax.

This is what I’ve been doing most of this past week to relax when there was no dog hair left to brush out.

When you draw with your non-dominant hand, you use your brain differently. You’re essentially giving the analytical part a break and letting the other side take over for a bit (or something like that).

All I can say is that drawing with my non-dominant hand feels more relaxing.

Drawing something upside-down (say from a photo, no need to ask your dog to do a headstand) is a little bit like drawing with your non-dominant hand. When the thing is upside down, you can’t rely on your analytical mind. All you see is lines and shapes so you draw what your eyes see instead of what your brain thinks is there (and your brain gets a break - yay.)

I wrote this and then I realized that the way my dog spends her days, it’s impossible to say when she’s right side up vs upside down.

Anyway, I'm considering pivoting this language-learning challenge into a Draw-365-dog-portraits-a-year challenge. Except that then it will turn into another obsession and will stop being relaxing times. So maybe I won't.

Please tell me in the comments: Does your brain tell you when it’s time to take a break or do you only discover it when you instinctively reach for the dog brush (or a pencil or whatever tool doesn’t allow you to do the thing your brain is obsessing over?)

The Wrong Globe is a newsletter about language, culture, and belonging written by a Russian-born, Israel-based essayist, linguist, and single mom raising two trilingual kids.

If you’re disillusioned by the current state of humanity, but still secretly hope that curiosity can fix the world or at least make it a less horrible place, this space is for you. Welcome.

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