Changes

While I write mostly about horse stuff that isn’t my main career, I do treat the barn and riding like a second job, but I work a full time job to make it all happen with some careful spending. That being said it’s time for some big changes in my life and changing jobs is part of that big change. Changing jobs means interviewing for potential new ones, and I can’t help but find the similarities of walking into a job interview like going down center line, or galloping out of the start box towards the first jump on cross country. My heart frequently feels like it’s in my throat, as my pulse hammers and I try to channel “sitting chilly” but out of the saddle.

Surely enough like anything else as the interview rolls on I find myself settling like I do in the dressage ring, or finding our rhythm out on course. I attempt to project confidence like I do in dressage, a comment my mom once made to me after watching a particularly tense test with Pi was that I needed to smile, I didn’t look like I was enjoying it (I sure as heck wasn’t), but I needed to look like I was, for better or worse. Sure enough, it helped me focus on doing my job of riding instead of letting the constant what if game play on and I could feel myself relaxing. So as I walk into those interviews feeling as comfortable as I do in my show coat as I do in formal work clothes, I put on a smile, stand tall, and go down that centerline like there’s no place I’d rather be.

With these big changes are opportunities, and they’re opportunities I want to pursue, but it might mean leaving Packy behind, and that’s a hard pill to swallow. Partly because it’ll be the first time in four years I won’t have a horse to call “mine”, and majorly because I’ve become incredibly attached to Packy and if feels like we’re on the cusp of having a phenomenal season after working so hard. While I know she’d be just fine, and more than perfectly content to hang out and just eat all day, I don’t know if I’ll be okay.

I’m talking with several of my friends they talked about change being uncomfortable, and that not necessarily being a bad thing. I mentioned my self doubt, and a friend replied that it meant I had standards for the job I was approaching and another friend built off of that and said it was also bringing humility to the opportunity. However, I can’t help but feel the same sort of uncomfortable when I put on my show coat, and I’m trying to tell myself it’s a good thing, but it’s a hard thing to do. Hopefully it’ll all sort out and I’ll figure it out.

-k