Rambling Around the Hills

"No matter who you are or how successful you have become, you will have another bad day.  Accept it and move on." ~ Stan Beecham

The beginning of the trial season is here!  What has been the dreams of the winter becomes the reality of the now.  It does not matter if the days preceding were filled with training or time away from preparation, the trial season is indifferent to personal readiness.  Yet, opportunity remains abundant; opportunity for learning, assessing, growing, succeeding, working on "right" focus.  For me, I know if I base my identity and self worth on a score, I will live an empty life full of ups and downs. I can't always run at my peek, my dogs can't always run at their peek, together expecting peek performance weekend in and weekend out is...well, for one thing not realistic and, for another, is ego driven.  (I am still talking about "for me" btw).  The time has come; I feel the need to hang up my excuses and live in the now; not living in past accomplishments or disappointments, letting go of the preplan of "how I will do" at trials ahead. I know my character is formed, my learning curve sharped, opportunity to improve upon relationships are given by any run.

"What is to give light must endure burning" ~ Viktor Frankl

I'm re-evaluating my ranch and how to proceed into the future.  Letting go of what I love is hard but I do know that I need to embrace the seasons.  Letting go feels a lot like burning.  On the one hand, burning the internal rubbish is good and cleansing. However, there is that burn that happens when there are two good and equal choices, the one let go of can feel a lot like loss.  I think I'll try not lambing next year and see how that works and feels.  Well, unless I buy in some bred cull ewes that always seem to come "gift with purchase" when I buy them.

"Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle" ~ Abraham Lincoln

Hustle, amazing word.  I'm reading a new book on mental management and the focus of today's chapter  is: finding flow.  So instead of hustling against the stream, which creates the illusion that a person is giving 110% only because it is hard work paddling against the current, I want to hustle with flow.  Which then brings me back to burning the things in my life that don't serve me but create current and hinder me from going with the flow.  Sometimes words like "flow" and "timing" and "letting go" appear to be the antithesis of "hustle"....and yet not.  Hustle for me is doing all that needs to be done in preparation that will allow flow.  For example, an unfit dog can't get around a course, so we condition.  Hustle becomes the vehicle which allows the easy of flow.   Those days when i don't really "feel" like doing what it takes to achieve my dreams....those are the days when I'd like to "wait" on the 13.1 to come to me......hustle!

"There are two ways to live:  you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle" ~ Abraham Lincoln

My two weeks that surrounded Heppner and Zamora were filled with miracles that could only be found when I opened myself to what each day had to show me.  My dogs were partners, my puppy a trouper, my friends good and true, the road and hills filled with amazing beauty atop those hard to climb inclines and hills.  I wonder about competition; my new book wants me to find the why's in what I do. Funny as I sort that out I'm better at listing my goals...the why's behind these goals are requiring some serious mining and, thus far,  I've only found a few nuggets, I've not hit any vein yet. Why do I give lessons?  Why do I work dogs and travel America to trial?  Why do I run?  And of the small answers i have begun to find; which were handed to me by others and which are deeply and truly mine?

I want to live as if everything is a miracle: good days, bad days; burning, growing, in the hustle of the flow.

Seize the day!