Day 23: Something you wish you HAD done…

I wish I had listened to my gut and not the advice of others…not everytime, just more often. My dad was a commercial real estate developer. He loved making “the deal” and I think it was an adrenaline rush for him.

His advice to me was, make a good living doing something that will more than pay the bills and then you can have fun with the horse riding in your spare time.

Only thing was, I could never decide what it was I wanted to do that was going to make me all that money. I tried a lot of jobs that made the big bucks but I was so unhappy in those jobs that I couldn’t make myself stay.

I kept going back to a horse job and although I wasn’t making big money, I enjoyed it so much that I kept learning and kept growing in that field. Circumstances made me change jobs for one reason or another until I finally gave in and quit doing anything else. Starting colts under saddle, cutting horses, police horses, teaching riding, race track…always horses.

By that time I was in my forties and had wasted a lot of time that should have been spent improving the skills I had developed up to that point.

I think that If I had gotten more serious earlier, I maybe would have had a chance at the upper level Equestrian events but….

The cool thing is, I had my son. My position managing a cutting horse ranch while he was little, allowed me to put him on my lap while I worked most days. He was with me while I hauled horses, used the tractor to move round bales of hay and I loped horses within range of the baby monitor when he was napping.

So…If I had been off in another country jumping horses on the Grand Prix Circuit, I would have missed all that and as usual…everything was just fine the way it was…and is. I do wish though, that I had listened to my instincts more. They are there for a reason.