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SprinklerBandit
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Location: Boise, Idaho, United States
Gender: Female
Interests: horses, ballroom dancing, reading, writing, dogs, russian literature, football
Expertise: Reading minds
Occupation: Administrative
Industry: Construction
Message: message me
Member Since:
1/22/2005
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| I have neglected you. My apologies, remaining 4 readers. 
In my blogging absence, I've been doing lots of personal growth. It isn't really any fun, but I like myself better as a person now. I'm really working on what I consider to be an important life skill: Not Taking Things Personally.
My strength as a human and an employee is that I take absolutely everything personally. I take full responsibility for it and make it happen, whatever "it" happens to be. That is an excellent skill as long as you absolutely never screw up anything and never, ever, under any circumstances, leave your comfort zone.
The past six months or so have launched me out of my comfort zone into an area in which I repeatedly screw up pretty much everything. My choices were either feel like a failure constantly or learn that not everything needs to be personal and just go with it. Since feeling like a failure sucks, I finally came around to see that option #2 might be a better idea.
Honestly, it's working out great. I still work hard, but if I'm not able to accomplish every last tiny detail on a completely ridiculous to do list, I'm now able to say, "here's where I got to" and just be ok with it. I don't go home feeling like an abject failure of a human being.
Yes folks, I'm learning to be an underachiever. Who knew those sort of people had value?
I'm mostly kidding--obviously everyone has value of some sort. It's just that learning to let go a little bit and be ok with it is very, very good for me.
Maybe next I'll try to be something other than a neurotic, anxious mess. You never know! | | |
| My goals for this year:
1) Run half marathon
2) Develop confidence and skill on horseback
Next year:
1) Run full marathon
2) Finish novice level event on my dressage score (3' jumps)
3) Run 50k? This may be two years out.
Here's the plan: This year, I want to get to a point where I'm fit enough that I could do a half marathon pretty much any given weekend. In my mind, that means comfortable runs of around 10 miles at least once a week. That is double where I was last summer. Sounds pretty do-able, I think. I also want to keep up on my core conditioning and just flat out have fun with Cuna. I want to be comfortably and reliably jumping 3' courses with him.
Next year, I want to run a full marathon. Again, I don't want it as some sort of monumental effort--I want to be consistently able to run around 15-18 miles so that I am embracing that level of fitness. I was thinking of the 50k as a two year goal, but let's face it--that kind of training takes time, so maybe I should just be marathon fit and then tack on five more miles. We'll see how it goes.
In addition, I want to run Cuna around a novice level event and rock it. I sort of doubt we'll win a ribbon with any decent competition, but I want to do our best at dressage and then go double clear on the cross country and show jumping.
Should be a rocking good time. | | |
| I know I promise to not talk about horse stuff here, but seriously. Horse stuff is how I understand life and I learn so much from it.
I talked before about the big red horse in my life and how awesome he is and how he came to me through such a funny string of circumstances that it had to be orchestrated by someone who cared and knew all my weird proclivities.
Now I'm riding the red horse (Cuna) every day and having a ball with him. He came to me to teach me something, and I'm learning more from him every day. Because of my years with Izzy, I have a lot of anxiety to work through related to riding and especially jumping. Enter Cuna. He is a total schoolmaster, able to take me anywhere I want to go. He set a few ground rules (don't yank on my face and don't obnoxiously throw off my balance) and now I'm just learning to trust him.
He's always always always good to me. When I started riding him, I was scared to jump crossrails. He taught me they were no big deal, which I consciously knew, but wasn't able to process. Then we moved up a little bit and again, he showed me a could trust him with bigger stuff.
Now my instructor is starting to push the fences even higher. I'm entering territory I've really never been in before and I'm continuing to trust Cuna. I can't rely on my own experience any more. I have to have faith that he will do exactly what he's been doing all along. He is faithful with the little things. Now I have to trust him to be faithful with more.
It's such a perfect picture for where I'm at in life. I didn't have to depend on faith for things I already understood. Now I'm starting to push my personal limits of understanding and I just have to trust that He who has been faithful all along will continue to take care of me. | | |
| This has been an interesting winter. Due to my work schedule, I basically quit running in December. I only had time when it was dark and below freezing outside and that killed any and all motivation. The days are longer now and it's getting warmer, and I've started feeling an urge I never felt before: an all-consuming need for a run. Of course, my work schedule is still crazy and I'm constantly behind on housework and I'm barely reading anything, but I really, really wanted it to change.
Last night I came home from work at 6, changed into running clothes, and took the fuzzy midgets for a run. We just went two miles slow and easy, but it felt so good to be back. I feel happier, more steady emotionally, and more comfortable with myself. I am super proud that going out and running the first time this year was a nice, comfortable TWO MILES, instead of just a few blocks like it was when I started running two years ago.
The poor dogs are very out of shape, so they thought they would die around the 1.5 mile mark. They looked so impressively tired that a lady riding her bike thought I was some sort of super woman to run them so far.
Ha!
Half marathon, here we come! | | |
| Last year at this time, I blogged about how much I hated my church's Easter service. (A play?? For serious??)
Apparently, mine was the only voice in opposition to the idea (not that I said anything to the church leaders, mind you), and they are doing another play this Easter. What's more, they want us to invite all our friends. Honestly, I thought the play last year was so horribly out of place that I found it embarrassing to attend, much less tell my friends.
I just want to go to a celebratory service with an awareness of what actually happened and sing some hymns and feel like "HUZZAH THIS IS WHY WE'RE ALL HERE". I wouldn't think it is all that hard to find something like that.
We'll be exploring new horizons this Sunday. | | |
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