Day 61, 28, and 25.

Here’s a video with info and a quick tour. It’s the fastest and easiest way for me to do this. Mondays are really busy days here and I’m staving off a meltdown today. I really, really, really, REALLY wish I knew what I was doing!!! Gah, some days are just so freaking hard. Everything is always changing, each tank has different needs, sometimes they start dying and I have no idea why. 😭😭

I know how miraculous this all is and how lucky I am to be able to experience it and to have the time and resources and support to take it on…but Lordy, some days. Honestly, it’s pretty consistently awful drudgery, punctuated by moments of sublime wonder and excitement. But this constant uncertainty and so many little lives in the balance and all the unknowns make me crazy!

A big part of why I’m doing this is to make it easier for those that try after me—creating a record of what worked and what didn’t to take away some of the guesswork for others—but day-to-day that goal gets subsumed as I fret and worry and try something new when the old stops working. Ugh.

I’m not someone who likes playing god (except in my fictional worlds) and the other day (to get through a rough patch where I couldn’t save all of them) I told myself, “You aren’t playing God, you’re playing Ocean.” Adopting that slant helped some, especially when I thought about all the times I’ve been in or on the ocean. Sometimes the vast ocean is comforting, a cradling, crackling, salty womb, but other days it’s wild and dirty and scary, completely indifferent to my piddly little life to the point of seeming mean. On those days when I’m struggling hard and losing some of the zoeae without knowing why, or fumbling in my efforts and causing unintended issues, I just tell myself, “You’re the ocean, Mary. And today the ocean is dirty and mean.”