juliajieunkim

This writing piece is part of a 30 day writing challenge I’m doing as my dog Pepper is nearing the end of her life.

Rules of the challenge

1. Write for 30 mins for 30 days
2. Don’t need to publish it, just write in apple notes as bare minimum
3. Write about grieving for Pepper and exploring my creativity
4. Publish on substack + medium + my website
5. Write from iPad

Good morning. Writing again from the kitchen counter with long chopsticks nails again. See the previous post, for some consistency.

I am not sure what I will write about today. And I suspect that I would start a lot of my future p osts with that line, that I am not sure what to write about today.

As I write this, I imagine the places that I recently visited during my travels. I imagine the town of Kamakura, and the little streets there and the people there, both the locals, the workers and the tourists from around Japan and the world. I imagine movement of the people, walking through the streets, and the shopkeepers saying ‘irashaimase’ when someone new walks in.

There’s something predictable and consistent in Japan that gives me a sense of ease. And this predictability helps me imagine the streets of Kamakura, and other areas like Shibuya that I stayed and visited.

As I imagine these places and what they would be like in this very moment, I get flashes of other areas like areas in Seoul that I visited, Yeonnamdong, Yeonhuidong, Mangwondong and Hongdae. I imagine the cherry blossoms to have mostly fallen by now, and the weather to be slowly warming up.

I can imagine the streets of Bali too. It would be busy with the scooters, lots of scooter noise and the smell of pollution with the chaos of the traffic and the streets dogs… that’s how I imagine Canggu.

I can imagine other areas of the world I visited, like Santos in Vanuatu, and areas of Europe I visited. And then I think about where I am right now in the world. I am in Sydney, and just because I am here, it doesn’t mean that world has stopped elsewhere. Just because my presence is here, it doesn’t mean that there aren’t other things… other amazing things, synchronicities, miracles, challenges, beauty, connections and all the things I see in my life here, aren’t happening elsewhere in the world.

This is overwhelmingly fascinating and beautiful at the same time, it gives me a sense of ease and… a togethernesss, that I am a part of a much bigger world, organism, chaos, beautiful and messy place.

As I grieve for my senior greyhound Pepper, who is now 13 years old, there’s a sense of “this is how things are meant to be” as I imagine different parts of the world and the earth continuing to rotate and revolve around the sun. There’s a sense of trust, and understanding, that there are things I cannot fathom, things I cannot see, things that I cannot imagine.

As I am trying to make sense of why my dog Pepper needs to die soon, or why she can’t live longer, there’s a part of me that knows that this is exactly how it’s meant to end, and this is how the story is meant to go, and end.

I’m not saying it’s not sad, or not painful. It is. It hurts my heart, my body is heavy. And I can feel that at times, if I don’t keep connecting and listening to my heart, my mind could lead me to dark places and to spiral into a place that would be hard for me to return to the heart.

I’m choosing each day to listen to Pepper, and to listen to my heart, to listen to my environment and to the bigger world I cannot see (where life continues to happen), and continue to create what I see, feel, think and express the words I have inside of me through this 30 day challenge.

This 30 day challenge is for me, to understand what’s going on inside of my as I live with my dying dog, and for me to look back at these times – so I can remember these precious moments. To remember how much beauty and care I carried Pepper’s final months, weeks, days, and remember what kind of person I am and how I lived.