March Goals

A whole lot of sass in a very small area

Is it really March already? It feels like it was just Christmas. Time really does go faster the older you get. In 11 days I will be 31 years old... When did that happen!? I started blogging when I was what, 23? Ah to be young again with fewer cares and not much to do in the day beyond riding and blogging. Literally I think that's about all I ever did.

These days, as usual, I am still struggling to find the right balance of everything all in a day together. The days are getting longer now, which is extremely helpful and makes for a much happier me. The more sunlight I get, the better. I guess winter is over now, though I can't say that Texas even really had one this year. Right after Christmas, we had an explosion of deadly tornados followed by 3 inches of snow, literally, and that was the only kind of winter weather we've had to deal with. It was cool in January, but ever since it has been about 70 every day, and sometimes 80. The horses mostly sleep naked and we have only had one single day of rain since December. Not bad, although is dare say the bugs will carry us all off one of these days... Dear god that thought scares the crap out of me.

I decided that in order to get more efficient with my goal making and blogging, I have to make some changes. What I was doing before clearly doesn't work now. When I am at home, I am either working the horses or I am hanging out with Future Hubs, who I rarely see with his current schedule. I don't sit on my butt blogging and ignoring him at the end of the day, so blogging gets pushed to the backburner. And pushed back some more. And some more. Well, that's not very effective, is it?

So I decided that I need to blog during the day. When I am out on the road, many times I will have small breaks in the day when I do things like toodle on my phone, read a book, take a nap, or go for a walk to kill some time. I despise being late so I generally give myself a wide margin of arrival time, and sometimes I am early (like right now). There is no reason I can't be doing a bit of blogging while I have nothing else to do! I'll be giving that a try this month.

I also am going to change the way I approach goal setting. Currently I've been focusing on a bunch of goals, but never seem to be able to accomplish everything given the number of animals I am now working with. Instead, I want to broaden it out a bit and make fewer goals for each animal, with a more general kind of feel. Each animal gets one main big goal, and then the ones I am working more heavily with may get a couple of small goals. I also want to start making "farm goals" I.e. Things that need to be done around the farm in relation to the horses or even a bit toward just basic outdoor property management (like gardening for example, not indoor house goals). These too will probably be kept simple and broad, and be more long term type goals like building more sheds or redoing footing.

Let's see if I can actually put this into effect...

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O-Ren March:

1) Continue set schedule of conditioning drives, dressage drives, cones practice, and lunging

2) Remeasure wheels and set for new cones width - and practice!

3) Make sure outfit is set for the season!

4) Send in entries for Sunrise Ridge and the Drive Fest!

Dylan March:

1) Continue dressage rides/hacks, work primarily on myself!

2) Set up working equitation obstacles at home and practice! 

3) Figure out what still needed for tack/equipment/attire for shows

Lendri March:

1) Continue to play with bits - see what she likes best

2) Teach long-lining! 

Pangea/Pax/Uma/Zuul March:

1) Groom and mess with everyone 1-2x a week

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Farm Goals:

1) New run-in shed for front field

2) Redo footing in lower mare pasture

3) Get veggie garden started!

4) Main garden? Maybe?

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See what I mean when I say there are a lot of them? Phew.

I think by categorizing them into "not working/showing currently" and "working/showing currently" I will be better able to isolate the things that need to be done. The working horses get priority on goals while the non working horses are getting things done with them, but not with as much of a crunch. 

I also have news on Pax - she may possibly be sold to a very good friend of mine. It's not set in stone yet by any means, but it would be a great situation for all of us. My friend would get her awesome young horse to raise up and show, I would get to keep tabs on her whereabouts and get her back should anything change, and Pax would get a great loving home. Pax is an amazing babe but I just can't keep them all, and I managed to get my hands on some semen that I've been after for a very long time to make a babe that would absolutely be a keeper. More on that soon!!