Tuesday, November 2, 2010

The 100 year drought....

Right now I feel like the world's worst blogger.  Nearly a month and no actual updates?  How does that happen?!

I'll tell you how that happens... stress/confusion/frustration/lack-of-sleep

Basically for the last year or so I've been running around like a headless chicken, scaring small children and making in-audible screeching noises (ok, maybe not the last two things).  Now, I LOVE being busy, and working hard for a goal, however I was losing more and more time with the two things I love most in this world - J-Bomb and P-Diddy.

I've been very lucky that P is as good as he is, and was able to rock his move up to Preliminary, qualifying for a CIC*, all the while, improving in a program that consisted of scattered jump schools and midnight trot sets/dressage schools.... what a good boy.

J-bomb became resigned to the fact that his fiancé may not clean, cook, or ever be home, yet he would call during the day to make sure I was ok and we'd talk and fill eachother in on what's going on, since the only times we'd see eachother face to face, one of us was usually asleep.

Recently I've become quite busy with the horse stuff, with more training horses and more lesson clients.  I even took up a new 'organizing' hobby, tackling a Combined Test (which happened last weekend) and a Hunter Pace (coming up next weekend).  I've also picked up some more freelance marketing/design/website business.  I love the direction all my personal business is going, however, I was still running out of hours in the day and most of my hours were being spent at ThinLine, doing things that weren't being productive towards my personal goals.

Do you know how hard it is to try and quit a job, especially in this economy?  It's kind of like jumping off a cliff, into the deep end, in the dark, without telling anyone where you're going (hence the "how to fall" post from last week -- that was the day of the quitting). For the last year, I've been pondering this move, telling myself that the time would come.  Well, in the last week, two things happened which made me realize it was time...

First off, I took P down to Aiken for the Paradise Horse Trials. I won't go into crazy amounts of details, but the whole trip was a bust, from a crazy bit check person on a power-trip, to retiring on XC (and not realizing they marked me as an E until way later).  P did jump one of only two double clears in SJ, and will live to fight another day (another day that I've actually prepared appropriately for!).

P had done the CT at Fenridge the weekend before, winning easily, and although that was the only jumping we'd done since AECs, I felt semi-prepared for Paradise, which wasn't good enough, since neither P nor I were seeing our spots very well. Lesson learned.  P's fine, I'm fine, now we school for the winter, and come out in February ready to fight hard!!!!!

The second thing that made me realize that it was time was the fact that when J-bomb and I did get to see eachother, it usually involved me having a minor mental meltdown about something stupid.  John finally asked me if he could schedule some "non-crazy-Cassidy-time", and told me to write it in my calendar.  I think that's a sign that things need to be better, eh?

So I went and gave my notice last week, and luckily (for my bank account), ThinLine is going to let me continue on at 2 days a week and I can spend the rest of the time growing my business!  It's a huge relief... one that hasn't really hit me yet, I think.  I did get to clean out my fridge yesterday morning (and in the process, I became painfully aware of just how long it had been since I'd done housework), and have a pretty loaded schedule still, but I'm thinking I'll be having way less meltdowns on John.

Prophet has a dressage show this weekend with a light XC school. We then will have a dressage lesson next week, and continue chipping away at our dressage and show jumping throughout the winter.

I do have some very exciting news about new sponsors and more updates, but it just took me a while to work up the courage to announce that "I quit!" so those posts will be coming soon!

Here's to hoping that the riding/marketing/teaching/etc... business that is C-Horse keeps growing and growing... Ciao, ciao!

3 comments:

Unknown said...

I did something similar in August. Wanted a better job, not qualified for one. So I quit and went to school. Even more broke now but I'm telling myself that when I have a master's degree I'll make enough money to live AND time to ride my horse. Good Luck!
-Kelly

Karen said...

Does this mean ThinLine has an opening?! :-) Hook a sister up!

Boss Mare Eventing said...

I have so been in your shoes...like last year I quit my jobs to move home with my parents and save money...so I wouldn't have to sell my horse. Ohh, the things we do to keep riding. I'm back to my blog after a hiatus as well. Can't wait to hear the story about the bit check lady on a power trip.