Busy Times

I’ve been complaining a lot about being busy and figured I’d talk a little about what I’ve been doing. 

I dropped/lost (it was mutual) a client at the end of September but gained so many in August/September that I haven’t been able to feel the lighter workload that one less client provides me this month. As a horse trainer, life has been great! So it's been insane and I'm fighting burnout on the regular. 

Busy days mean getting up before the sun does to drive out to
the barn in the fog

My regular clients are all doing well. For the most part, all of them are at different stages of connection. Seeing the horses finally GET it and reach for the contact is cool, as is watching their toplines grow. Having my riders feel the connection for the first time has been really fun as well. And everyone is working hard on their biomechanics alongside getting ready for shows and pony club ratings. 

Teaching clinics has been fun too, I have a great group of riders to teach once a month and am hoping to add another regular barn for clinics in the spring. I really love teaching clinics! My regular clients are so fun, but it’s a lot of responsibility. It’s all worth it because I adore my regular clients, but being able to go teach 5-8 lessons once a month is great. It’s fun to see the progression with them, as they have more time between lessons to progress so I get to see a greater difference. 

But of course, teaching is a lot of work. And work is a lot of work. And riding too. And commuting. Also I start my L program this weekend so that’s going to be a lot of work. This new SO is more supportive of me than I've ever experienced (do they frequently make people like this?), so he’s happy to work around my schedule, come with me when I go clinic (!!), and encourages me, buuuuut naturally much of my free time is now tangled up.  

This is me working (job #1) from a horse show I was
coaching at (job #2) last weekend

With all these busy times, I'm struggling a little bit, I frequently feel emotionally raw and physically exhausted. Getting enough sleep has been tricky. Getting to the gym is basically NOT happening right now. It's hard to say no to lessons coming into winter when the rain literally rains on my parade horse training business. 

But it's been so worth it. I've hit every goal I've set out this year. My goal of elevating my level of financial security was blown out of the water, I'm way ahead on my retirement savings and am feeling more comfortable than I have in the past. My goal of finding really good clients to ride with me on a regular basis has been met tenfold it seems. Everyone is so supportive and understanding (and those who aren't are shown the door) and I'm so excited for the progress they're making. 

With everyone enjoying their lessons and being so supportive, I'm getting good feedback. Owners of horses noticing that their horses are packing on muscle and are more mentally relaxed. Riders saying that they feel more secure in the tack, that their horses feel better, texts about how well they're doing at shows, or seeing them trot up centerline in person. All of this has nearly killed my impostor syndrome, for the first time ever I feel like an actual horse trainer. My language has been changing. I talk about my business as a business, not as this thing I do and sometimes people pay me. I talk about having riders in my program, although I'm not a traditional training program, I do have several that I see at least twice a week, so that's my version of a program. 

Feeling better is one thing, but because of how hard I'm working, I am really excited for the winter because I get to actually take a real live normal human vacation this year (planning for early spring so as to not miss show season but also not go right before hard times financially). I'm also going to get a lot of random days off due to rain. I decided that the first day that rain stops me from teaching, I'm going to take the day off work and just lay around like a slug all day. So excited to do that! 

If I can swing two vacations next year, this is the other place we
will be going! 

So generally, even though the blog has taken a back seat (as has the gym, as has my sleep), I'm really happy. I can't sustain this kind of crazy schedule forever, but I think I can do another year like this before I start looking for a way to condense my schedule. Who knows what will happen in the future, but for now, I'm very happy! Very busy and sleep-deprived... but happy. And that's more than I could say last year at this time!