Soul Search

As I'm spending this vacation time searching my soul, trying to understand what I want, something came to light today that I've glimpsed before...I am shy. In high school, I used to cry before I had to go to school. My most telling photo of myself is with my books held in front of me, head ducked. I had a bad accident at 16 and found a way to hide my shyness so I could make it through months of high school with a broken nose and missing a front tooth. I learned to fake it and have been faking it since. Today, I am to take several pieces of my art to be hung in a local eatery, where it will be for sale. I've had work in galleries, but this is new. The owner sounds like a young, confident person, which makes me feel more shy. I actually cried about it. I feel extremely vulnerable. What if they make fun of me? Of my art? Tonight, I have to be at the opening of a show where my art will be displayed. That, too, is painful. I usually bluster with fake over-confidence to hide my true feelings. It makes me hate myself. I know I come across as rude and arrogant. Now I am trying to link this to running The Rat Retreat. Is this why I don't always get along with volunteers? Visitors? Adopters? Depending on how well I know the person, I sometimes dread their arrival. I dread having to make conversation. It's exhausting...trying to think of how to respond, especially if it's someone I don't know well or someone who I feel wants something from me besides knowledge. Knowledge is easy to give. I can reel off facts about rats and their needs, with ease. Once the questions run out, though, I don't know what to say. Once it gets personal, I clam up. I am afraid for someone to know me too well...just the facts, ma'am...that's all I can give. How does one run a business with this personality? Especially a business where you have to interact with people often?

New directions?

My mind has been churning the last few days with the question, "Art or Rats?" I visualize being in my studio, surrounded by paint and canvases with splashes of color. I think of my unused art supplies...pastels, markers, fabrics...and dream of projects I'd like to do. But I'm usually doing my dreaming with a rat in my lap, lapping medication off my finger. Then I try to imagine my house without rats and it seems empty, dead. "So I can have a few as pets," I tell myself. Then I imagine the calls I'll get from the humane society about the rats that will be put to sleep if I don't take them or will have to live closed in cages alone...without human companionship. How to live with that? My reading stack, since vacation started, has been largely business-related: Executive EQ, Parliamentary Procedure, books on running nonprofits and boards. I have been plowing through, a chapter here and there of each...it's been hard work because I don't find business very interesting. Today, though, I found myself in the library in front of the self-help section. Volunteers and board members have intimated that I may just have a problem getting along with people, so I was looking for a book to help. Emotional Awareness caught my eye. Then How to Win Friends & Influence People. Then a big yellow book, on how to choose a career based on your personality type, jumped into focus. I've done these tests before so was able to quickly scan to find my personality type: Introverted Sensing Feeling Perceiving. "Likely to be animal lovers... and need to have personal space." These are the two very conflicting qualities I have discovered in running The Rat Retreat. "ISFPs are action-oriented individuals." They are "doers." I want to help these rats and I'm very serious about it and dedicated to it. I cannot do as much for them without the help of others, but "ISFPs have no desire to lead or control others," wherein lies the problem. Volunteers expect leadership. Part of my nature and part of the thing that feeds my creativity is relaxing. I picked up The Art of Doing Nothing with the hope of re-learning that skill. Having so many people around, wanting to talk to me, makes it difficult. As I sat in the library pondering my dilemma, I saw another book Finding Meaning In The Second Half of Life. Earlier I had picked up one on learning to be a senior citizen. I am only 55, but am permanently disabled, with a host of diseases and, for all intents and purposes, I am retired. Remaining peaceful, relaxed and low-key helps me to stay healthy enough to keep taking care of rats and doing art. "Maybe that is the key," I told myself, "to behave like a retiree." I started imagining a new kind of Rat Retreat. What if we had members, who paid a fee, were allowed to adopt so many rats per year as part of their membership, and were required to volunteer so many hours per year? After all, if The Rat Retreat isn't here, they will have to get rescued rats from other states, unless they happen to hit the humane society at the right time. And wouldn't people who care about rats, want to know they have a good place to live rather than being put to sleep? And wouldn't they want to help? The answer to those questions might solve my dilemma.

A Typical Day

Ok, there really isn't a typical day at The Rat Retreat. The path of each day depends on the number of volunteers, visitors, sanctuary rats, rats to be adopted and sick rats as well as whether we have an event. So it changes from day-to-day. I'll tell you about today, though. Rats are social and need company, but they live in colonies, so you can't just plop a new rat into someone else's cage. Hence, we sometimes have singles. Single rats ideally need from 2 to 4 hours daily of human attention. They don't get that in this place, but I try. First thing in the morning, I take my breakfast of a couple pieces of fruit, and single rat, Bear, to the sofa to eat. Bear hops and runs and snuggles and shares breakfast for half an hour. Then I do meds. We have 19 rats today, only 5 on meds, some are taking two meds. That's a low number, so morning meds only takes about an hour. Then a bath with Bear. While I do my morning cleansing rituals, Bear hops in and out of the water, and runs around the large bathroom, knocking everything over. That's another half hour. So on a good day, Bear gets an hour of my time. If a volunteer comes in, he may get a little more of someone else's. Next is trust-training single rat, Domino, who is not ready for Bear's level of freedom and human interaction. He still bites. So I will feed him some soft food off a spoon, then my fingers. He will eventually climb into my towel-covered lap. I have prepared for this with a bath and a clean, long-sleeved top, but eventually he will smell Bear and start with a warning nip. At that point, between 10 and 20 minutes, I will wrap him in the towel and put him back on his table. Any day could be different, because he's been neutered. As soon as it takes effect, we will progress to longer periods of time together until he, also, gets an hour. By then, I hope to have had a successful introduction with Bear to a group, because two hours a day with single rats is a big chunk of the day. Most days I have to do a cage cleaning, or water-bottle cleaning, then paperwork, social networking, bookkeeping...a myriad of tasks that go with running a busine4ss and having too few volunteers. Today I am on vacation and a volunteer is coming. The most I'll have to do in my workday, besides what I already did, is pick up supplies. When my workday is over, I enter my worknight, which is a little easier. There is another round of meds, chopping fruits and vegetables for dinner and trying to get around to the three colonies. Tonight I may be able to spend the minimum half hour with them, that they need. I will carry them, one colony at a time, to the sofa and give them treats while I watch a show. They will get scritches and love and I will get grooming and love. The interaction with the rats is what makes the day worth it. Most of this does not happen if I have a very sick rat. Sometimes they need 2 to 4 hours of attention, alone....sub q fluids, hand-feeding, 4 doses of medicine, bathing, etc. Thank God that today there are no very sick rats here. It looks to be a relaxing day!

Help with animal rescue

Thinking About Moving On

I've been here for 4 years...running this rescue/sanctuary for largely unwanted, unpopular animals. I am so tired. I've cried myself to sleep too many times; begged for volunteers; begged for donations; gone bankrupt; been homeless and watched over 100 animals die. I've done most of it myself for most of the time: the cage cleaning, the nursing care, the fundraising, the marketing and most recently kept up the social networking.

I am not at all tired of the animals, but am enormously tired of the people: the volunteers that are unhappy and put upon and don't show up but half the time and when they do want to talk and talk and talk; the donators who require much thanks for few dollars that just don't go far; the people who surrender the animals with their weak stories of self-pity; the people who adopt the animals with their upset over having to pay half the spay or neuter fee; the people who lean too heavily on me for help with things they could look up for themselves; and the heavy requirements of social networking. And I'm tired of me and my lists and need to please the people I'm around and my nervous need to chatter when there are people in my house.

Even the work with the animals is largely made work because of the opinions of others: you should do this, you should stop doing that.

I am an artist, a painter, a reader, a writer, a loner. People suck the life out of me. I have great difficulty with friendships unless they have heavy boundaries.

I have not done any art in 6 days. I can always tell you how long it's been. For me it is like going without food. So what is stopping me? People are always coming here and I have to get ready for them...volunteers, adopters, visitors. The board is not talking unless I'm there. I should be doing some fundraising, the bookkeeping, balancing the checkbook, paying the bills. It's time for the animal's twice daily meds, their dinner, their water bottles to be washed, the cages clean. I have an idea for business improvement that I need to act on immediately. And the studio is not set up for what I really want to do: paint.

I can hardly think of how I can mix the animals and art anymore. I am too obsessive. I need to do either thing completely. But I can't live without either. So I'm thinking about what to change. My vacation starts Sunday...vacation from board meetings, volunteers and visitors, but not from the rats. Oh, did I tell you they are rats?