Today I woke up feeling unsure of myself and from then on it was all downhill. It was difficult getting morning work done because the sun was shining brightly. A neighbor appeared and she raved about how wonderful the trails were on the other side of Moose Creek. I felt bad. She’s in excellent shape and I am not. She sat on our porch and told both Pete and me that she’s been riding nearly every day. I, of course, was very cordial and asked her questions about her adventures. I then hurried down to the horse pen and resumed pen cleaning. This neighbor followed. I then got Tinni out and got out his grooming implements and the mat.

Alys and Raudi during vet check CTR 2017

As we were talking, Pete zipped by on his bicycle, and then neighbor went and joined him, leaving me to finish my chores and to tend to the horses. I took Tinni out for a walk/ride. I did not feel as though he did as well the other day, but then it could have been that because I felt uneasy that my expectations were unusually high.

Pete returned and gave me an assist getting the April agility course up. It’s tricky. My friend Heather came over – I had her watch me first do the Intrinzen work with Tyra and then the agility work. Tyra didn’t do as well as I expected; again, I think that my expectations were unusually high.

Pete then rode Raudi, I rode Tyra, and Heather rode Hrimmi. Raudi moved rather slow (Pete, who rode her, disagrees and says that “she was just fine), Hrimmi stopped quite a bit, and high headed Tyra was inconsistent. Again, my expectations were unusually high.

I just had an ahh haa moment. The horses seemed to me to do poorly because I was in performance mode. And I was in performance mode because I was feeling bad about the choice I’d made earlier, which was stay put and not go for a bicycle ride. Deep down, I thought that I might have been able to fit this into my day’s schedule. I wanted to show what the horses could do. And I wanted to show Heather what a good teacher I am. Had I abandoned the performance mode and just do as I usually do, I would have been better off. And the horses would have been better off too.

The human mind is quite amazing – it takes in information and then organizes this information so that it can be presented to others. How does it do this? Some are better than others at organizing and presenting information. Why is this? And what do self-expectations have to do with this? I think more than people might think.

Right now I am telling myself that tomorrow will be a better day. I’ll pretty much do what I did today; in the morning I’ll write and study my vet tech chapters. Then I’ll get out and play with the horses. We most likely won’t have visitors, so I won’t be lead astray by my own expectations.

Next: 98. 4/8/18: The ABC’s of Listing