i was driving down the road to charlottesville the other day and this john mayer song came on, and i haven't really listened to ole john much since college, but this sung rung true with me and my favorite part said:
Nothing to do
Nowhere to be
A simple little kind of free
Nothing to do
No one but me
And that's all I need...
i haven't updated the blog in a while because there was so much to say and i just couldn't put all the words down in front of me. finally, i have wrapped my head around the last few months and gotten life all sorted out and am finding a new happiness, and wow, it's light and free and graceful and welcomed.
when i last updated i was sort of realizing that my marriage was not one that was headed for the 50 year mark, or even the 5 year one, and though i like to keep this blog generally related to the "children", it does act as a personal diary of sorts, and this huge life makeover definitely affects me and the four legged kids!
basically, all in the matter of a week, ryan and i decided to end our marriage amicably and respectfully. we are fine and we are nice and we are fun, but being married just wasn't working. it was totally mutual and i think and hope we will both go on to find a kind of happiness that we both deserve. so the day after our three year wedding anniversary, we decided to split. the day after that, i decided that finishing up my second degree and living in atlanta just didn't really do it for me anymore. i have never really done anything "risky" with my life, but i dove in head first and started searching for jobs in the horse industry. as made obvious in this blog, i am a horse girl to my soul and the older i get, the more i realize that doing what makes you truly happy is in fact, important. i value less and less the things that we are told to think are important and more and more i find myself satisfied by a life lived outdoors, surrounded by horses and dogs and great gardens and good people and the idea of an hour long commute in atlanta traffic every morning just to get to work at a job that i took because i "should" just seems to me to be a life lived untruthfully. i am just not cut out for city/suburb living and that's become more and more ok with me! i found a few job prospects on the internet and went to sleep and slept like a baby for the first time in months. the weight of who i was as the married girl in school living in atlanta was just too heavy for me and the dreams of who i could be as the girl living on a farm somewhere doing what i loved every day flashed through my head and i woke up just knowing that it was time for a change.
i spent a few days weighing options and praying and praying and praying some more about following HIS plan rather than my own and as usual, in my running joke with Jesus, i asked for my burning bush since i am often too dense to listen to what He is trying to tell me. i wanted to make sure that these ideas about changing my career and lifestyle permanently were no just mine and that they were right for me- i knew everyone would probably think i was running from something, and even though what others think doesn't often bear much weight with my decision making process, i wanted to convince myself that i was running TO something better- and better because God wanted it for me. for the first or maybe second time ever, i got a burning bush. no sooner did i say amen than my phone rang and on the other end was a friendly voice wanting to talk to me about a position at an eventing barn in Virginia called Plain Dealing Farm. as chillbumps rose up on my skin, i thought to myself, "I have heard of this farm before..."
after that phone call i got invited up for an interview, and i scrambled to send my very best horse related references notice that all this was happening so fast and could they please answer the phone if a 434 number called! the job was my dream job, on a dream of a farm, in a dream of a place, with a dream of a benefits package, but it was real, and i wanted it. i could take my horse, i could bring my dogs, riding would be part of the work day, and traveling to horse trials all over the country and possibly internationally was all int eh job description. my excitement grew for the interview and i filled my family and close friends in on what was going on. i drove up with mom, promising myself and her that i wouldn't accept the position just because it had to do with horses, it had to be perfect, and it had to fit my life and there were just a lot of "ifs" that had to fall into place. i have seen many a beautiful farm, and many a beautiful horse and many a tree lined drive, but i got out of the car, and i just knew i was home. literally, i knew. i worked a day at the farm and did the riding part of my interview and they offered me the job in the tack room just after that. i accepted. and here we are...
as im writing this i am sitting in a holiday inn in maryland. we are up at the loch moy horse trials this weekend and we brought four of the six competition horses. in the last two weeks i have had to say goodbye to all of my family and friends in georgia, the state i have called home my entire life, move an entire house full of furniture, two dogs, and a horse and a barn full of stuff 11 hours north to virginia, move in my new house "pine cottage", on the edge of the farm, start a new job, make friends, learn a whole new farm full of horses, dogs, guinea hens, peacocks, chickens, and proliferate skunk population (thats another story), learn every detail for the care of six upper level event horses, how to drive a stick shift mini truck, how to feel comfortable driving a 3 horse, 4 horse, or 6 horse gooseneck trailer and dually down curvy mountain roads carrying horses worth more than my life and everything in it, the feed and care for all the other farm horses (including one very special retired silver medalist we call the danimal, aka winsome adante), relearn how to put studs in, give IM and IV shots, set jumps, get the skunk smell off of a 2* horse and his flymask, coax a snake from the indoor arena, get fresh black petroleum based fence paint off of a 3* horse for the THIRD day in a row, clip and braid all the competition horses, weed and plant a garden, try to design an obstacle course difficult enough to keep a large black dog named doodle OUT of my bed (i haven't won yet), learn my way around scottsville and charlottesville, learn how to NOT make a face when Dave Matthews walks in to have pizza at the obscure little lunch place where you are eating and then you subsequently find out he is your neighbor, also not make a face when olympic/rolex event riders waltz in the barn and say "that horse in the second pasture is running around like crazy" (oh yes, that would be mine), make food to take to 4th of july parties to hopefully make more friends and not feel homesick for the ones i left in atl. and don't get to see, ride my horse in the evenings as the sun sets over the hills and the buzz of the daily farm activities is replaced by chirping crickets and then go home at the end of the day every day and get to watch the dogs run around in a huge yard, fence and leash free, and enjoy themselves and refuse to come inside until they are covered in mud and some currently unnamed smell that i can't figure out, give them baths in the hose outside, and then beat the thunderstorms inside to crash in the bed and listen to the rain on my metal roof. that's just a sampling of the last two weeks, and i've never been so tired and so happy all at once. as soon as my head hits the pillow i am asleep, but as soon as my alarm goes off, i am ready for another day and thankful for it.
i miss my friends, i miss my family and i miss the familiarity of everything in GA, but i can't imagine a better place to be right now, and a cooler town to be in, or a better farm to live on. thank God for my burning bush that day, and that i had sense enough to see it.
tomorrow is an early morning- up at five, so more to come later. :)
6 years ago
