I have a journal that I started about 8 years ago...when I was 29. The initial entries were from a vacation, my first visit to the fascinating country of Cuba with my husband. I brought some dressage and yoga magazines to read and there was an article on goal planning within one of them. I was getting serious about starting a small business as a professional equestrian, and so the exercise of writing out one's hopes and dreams seemed like a reasonable place to start.
No matter how wild or long-term, it needed to be written down.
Looking back at it now, it is truly amazing to be able to strike a few things off that incredible list. I can see how the way I wrote 'run a year round facility' was a very shy way of saying 'indoor arena', because it was too big, too much, and I should never expect such a thing in my life. I guess the other option was to move further south....though we actually did move further south; we lived in Timmins at the time!
Watching this slide show is not like the actual process. Before the crew arrived, there were years of dreams and desire and months of trepidation that I was changing my financial plan to make a huge, expensive, foolish mistake. Forget scary movies on Hallowe'en night, this kind of fear is real!
No matter how wild or long-term, it needed to be written down.
Looking back at it now, it is truly amazing to be able to strike a few things off that incredible list. I can see how the way I wrote 'run a year round facility' was a very shy way of saying 'indoor arena', because it was too big, too much, and I should never expect such a thing in my life. I guess the other option was to move further south....though we actually did move further south; we lived in Timmins at the time!
Watching this slide show is not like the actual process. Before the crew arrived, there were years of dreams and desire and months of trepidation that I was changing my financial plan to make a huge, expensive, foolish mistake. Forget scary movies on Hallowe'en night, this kind of fear is real!
As the sand inside was put down and smoothed out, the guys said 'Go get a horse and see', so I threw a halter on old Andy and watched him trot around to check that we had the depth right. He's feeling good these days, and pranced around beautifully while we admired him. I told the guys 'I've had this horse for 17 years....' and the weight of all that time hit me hard in the moment. I'm certainly not that 20 year old kid who first met that little black horse in the back of the stable so long ago! It is hard to articulate the realization of dreams that have been the undercurrent of my whole life. An indoor arena isn't just another building, it's a place of quiet concentration where training can happen without interruption. I look across my beautiful new space and I'm filled with hope and excitement about what's to come. Let's get to work.
Thank you so very much to Keith McLaren of K Building Specialist Inc in Cobden, and Sam McCrea of McCrea Excavating in Pembroke for your commitment and excellent service. Most of all, though, thanks to my husband for pushing me to take the plunge.
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