I think a major theme we can all pin point from my blog posts is my uncanny ability to be jealous of one thing or another. From the value of the horses I ride, to the amount of money I currently have in my bank account, to the tack I can (or more importantly, CANNOT) afford. Please don't get me wrong, I am way happy living this "horse poor" lifestyle, but the future is so far away, and so is all that STUFF. I am green with envy about my green horses and my lack of green backs!
I was sitting around one freezing cold day watching one of the many Grand Prixs from Florida and just getting bitter when I decided to write this post. How do all of those people have all that money to show all the time? Where did they get those horses? How do I get there? I was musing about the fancy houses and trailers and dozens of Ariat Monaccos they've got lined up in their closets just waiting to be used in yet another huge jumper class. I imagined what their beautiful barns with shining perfectly muscled horses must look like and how many saddles they must have in their dehumidified, perfectly climate controlled tack rooms. Let me tell you, I was SO jealous.
But then I thought of my own life only a little over a year ago. Horseless, with a decent paying job, a second job, and plenty of free time. I was miserable. Working 8-5, coming home to eat a sandwich (alone), clean a bit, and take a walk with my dogs was my every day. I love my dogs. LOVE them. But I was born and bred to be a horse lady (although where those genes came from, no one could quite tell you).
So instead of being jealous, perhaps, I thought, I can make a plan. But how often do I make plans? Only every day of my life! I want to ride in that show. I want to own a horse like that. I want to have that truck and trailer. I want to have that saddle. WAIT! Those aren't plans! Those are dreams. Dreams are awesome. Plans are what gets you to those dreams. What I've been missing this whole time is a legitimate plan. Which is SO strange because if you enter my house and take more than a half second to look around you'll find lists upon lists upon lists. So right now my goal for Spring Break is to make a plan. It's gonna be loooooooong, because Rome wasn't built in a day, and if you find a horse for $700 today, it probably isn't going to be ready for the 1.4 m jumpers tomorrow.
Which leads me to my next portion of this play on words. It really isn't easy being green when it pertains to having untrained horses at a new barn trying to go it more alone than you ever have been before. Sometimes I attempt to ride a nice 3 stride line and Marvel can't figure out what a straight line is. Or I attempt to ask Cash to pick up his right lead and he decides he would rather get all worked up and nervous than relax and settle down into what I am asking him to do. Or Panda has a fabulous dressage lesson and then we have to canter a 20 meter circle and he almost impales himself on the chute the cattle come out of (because no, we don't have a dressage arena right now). And sometimes I am ok with all of those things and have the patience to deal with it. And sometimes I have deadlines in my head that we need to meet and we are all falling miserably short. So I get jealous again of all the made horses without giving any thought to how long it took them to get that way.
It's hard to have dreams and not get down on yourself sometimes. It's hard to make plans when you realize how long it will take you to really accomplish those dreams. Sometimes it seems impossible. Sometimes writing it down SUCKS. There are days when I've saved my money to make a purchase, I make that purchase and I am ecstatic and then 5 minutes later the reality of bills comes crashing down on me and I get depressed. There are days when I feel like I was just at the feed store yesterday, why do we need more hay?
I guess I just want to use this post as a challenge to myself and to everyone else out there who feels like it's not going to happen for them. At the barn we have a running joke that we all wish we were tennis players, or swimmers, or gymnasts, or knitted. ANYTHING but horses. But for those of us who were born with the horse bug running through our veins, there aren't any other options. I still don't know exactly how far I want to go but I need to make a plan. And I also need to understand plans change so they need to be flexible. It's ok to be jealous if you use those feelings to fuel your fire instead of using them to let you get depressed. You might have green horses now but with every passing day they get less green. And you become a better rider and a better person. I truly believe that if you have it in you, you can go far with hard work, a good team, and a plan. We're going to find out if that's true the further and further I get with the boys!
Stay tuned, in a few days I will be posting an update on the ongoings of life at the barn. It's probably not going to be inspirational, and I don't think it's going to make you pee with laughter, but we're all due for a status check. :) Some great things are in the works/have already happened for team green ponies (that's us!).
