Jump

After several years of contemplating and about a year of off and on looking, I have found myself standing on the edge of opportunity, and I've decided to make the jump.  There is, of course, some fallout to sift through, but I'm convinced that in the long run, this is the direction I am supposed to go.

Next week, I will be employed at a different horse farm.  It will be a few more hours per week, for more money per hour, and only horse-related tasks required.  Feed, turnout, clean and bed stalls.  No more housekeeping, no more errand running, no more pulling weeds or trimming shrubs around the owner's home, no more running around behind the other employee and being expected to pick up their slack while listening to the boss tell me how that person does 1/3 the work they used to yet she doesn't want to fire them.

(Yeah, I've gotten rather sour about my work situation.)

I won't be able to move my horses to the new farm because they are full up for the winter (34 head). That will be okay, I think. Because now I will be a paying boarder instead of a work-for-board boarder. Which means I can be picky about the care my horses receive and not be expected to just settle for mediocre (on the part of what the other worker isn't doing well). As much as I don't like to give money a whole lot of importance, there are times when you can't deny it's power.

I  also think it will be okay because hopefully in the spring we will be ready to move my horses home to this little place here.  So it will only be about six more months of dealing with the other farm in any way.  In the grand scheme of things six months isn't very long at all.  Not when you look back and know that I have, in some way or another worked there for most of the past twenty years.  Six months is a drop in the bucket.

So, anyway, while it might not sound like all that big of a deal, for me this is HUGE. I am no longer going to be pretty much a private stablehand/housekeeper/errand runner.  No, I am getting back into the public eye, the active horse industry. My time will no longer be spent hidden away on a farm that is itself in retirement; where no one comes and goes anymore.  Now I will be making connections that will, if they work out they way I intend, roll this job into the teaching and horse training career that I have wanted for decades.