Pet Decision paralysis

As someone who knows me and is astutely familiar with my mental state/mental health, I could use your advice/perspective on the place that I am finding myself. The evening that we came home from the funeral, I pretty much just went headfirst into a hyper focus mode of thinking about getting a new dog.  I spent hours that night looking at rescue dogs while Richard spent hours building Legos.

Now, to be honest, I've gone back-and-forth about this ever since Mosley passed away, but I will admit that the thought tends to come up when I am feeling my most stressed/down. For example, a couple of weeks ago I was having a really rough day, and Richard and I went and played some tennis and drove around for a little bit… It was after we had found out Gilberto passed away, and I went into the Carrollton animal shelter by myself and just looked at the dogs, came back out to the car, and sobbed. 

It's a topic that has come up many times since Richard has lost his job, which again makes me feel like I am just grasping at happiness/dopamine straws and thinking about doing this. My logic brain tells me that I'm having lots of uncomfortable big feelings that I don't want to sit with so I am looking for a way to control my life and to manufacture a large amount of positive change/happiness.  That same logic brain keeps pointing out how incredibly busy and overwhelmed I am trying to make the most out of this business and also do homeschool and also schedule activities and also manage the house and always feeling behind.  I haven't even cleaned out the fish tank in a month, and I'm going to get a new animal? 

That part of my brain keeps reminding me how much easier things have been now that I don't have another living creature to take care of, and How much work it can be to have a new dog, especially a rescue dog where you don't know their history. That logic brain keeps asking me if I even want a new dog. Wouldn't I prefer a cat? I've always talked about wanting a cat… I've always said maybe I'm not a dog person… But Richard won't get on board with that so I just revert back to the dog. 

But outside of all of that, I have spent an obscene amount of time flipping through Petfinder and every rescue page that I could find on Facebook looking at all these pictures of dogs and wondering which one might be a good match for our family, a good match for Oliver. I've even been looking at puppies, which I said I would never do because we certainly don't have the time or mental bandwidth to be potty training… But Richard really wants a puppy, so puppies keep coming up on my screen. I guess he would be here to help housetrained for a little bit, but I'm just anticipating that point where he hast to work and it all falls on me.

I'm having an impossible time disengaging from this obsessive scrolling, which makes it so hard to gather any kind of perspective. Am I just doing it because everything feels so shitty right now? So stressful, so lonely, in a never ending parade of bullshit? Am I chasing the idea that this is going to make things better when in reality it's just going to add another thing to the pyramid of things that we're trying to balance? Another barricade to self care, another barricade spending time with each other… I honestly have no perspective whatsoever. And I can't seem to find it. 

I feel torn between like different parts of myself. Like the part of myself that has always loved animals and always had a bunch of pets and the part of myself that is now a mother and a business owner and juggling what is probably too much with no extra space to take on more.

I don't know. I'm sorry this is very rambling for what should've been just a simple question. You'll notice from the timestamp that I can't sleep, I'm deep in my head, and I just can't seem to find a foothold on understanding what's going on in my own brain.

 There's a voice to keep saying this is a terrible idea and then there's another voice that is pushing me to go somewhere tomorrow and start meeting dogs. That it would make everyone else happy and we need some joy.  

Help lol