Uncertainty can be so scary.
But tell me this…is anything in life truly certain? I’m sure according to God’s plan, our life’s
path is, in fact, certain. But as far as
we know as human beings, nothing is certain.
We don’t know where life is going to take us. No matter how hard you try to map out your
life, God will throw a wrench in there from time to time to keep you on His
path. I am a firm believer that God
created my heart. All the feelings and
dreams that are in my heart, are ones that He put there. I came to the decision to risk it all and
move out here because of the free spirit and courage that He blessed me
with. I came to the decision to quit my
job and pursue my dreams because of the determination and drive that He gave to
me upon my creation. I truly believe
that God urges us to do things and to be who He created us to be. Whether the things we are doing are a mistakes
made to teach us a lesson of some sort or a means to fulfill our destiny, we
will never know. But I do know this…you
never know how deep the water is until you jump. Maybe you break your legs trying. But then again, maybe you survive and find
that a wondrous world has been awaiting you to just gain that courage to be
free from the restraints that your fear of the unknown has placed on you.
I took the day off from both writing and training
yesterday. I have to say, while it was
much needed, I think it was probably a mistake.
Whenever I lose momentum, I have a tendency to let my doubts start to
boil up. Am I making a huge
mistake? What happens if I go
broke? How am I going to pay this bill
or that bill? But every time I start to
have those doubts, God answers back with something positive. I finally found a second roommate
yesterday. I opened my heart and my mind
to the idea of having someone in the house who wasn’t just like me or my
previous roommates. After my other
housemate and me met up with this person and did sort of an interview, we both
felt that HE was a great candidate and would be a great addition to our home. So, God pulled through once again. As of next week, I won’t be spending
everything I have to pay rent and bills.
It was immediate relief and it was just that sign I needed telling me
that what I am doing is okay! I really
felt like it was His way of telling me to not give up on this dream that I have
and these goals that I have set for myself.
So, since part of this blog is to serve as inspiration and
the other part is to document my progress, I guess I should probably tell you
what I have been up to the last few days!
Thursday morning didn’t quite kick off like I had expected it to. Technology was most definitely not on my
side. I took my trip to town to sit at
Starbucks and submit my last post (“Leather Reflections”). If you are wondering why I travel 15 minutes
to town every morning to take advantage of “free” wifi and drink $4 coffee, it
is because until I started working on this project, I really didn’t need
internet at my house. However, it is
something that I will be looking into very soon…$4 coffee makes me want to
puke. So there I was, sipping on the
tastiest $4 peppermint mocha shot I’ve ever tasted, and my computer decides it’s
going to “act up”. I couldn’t get
online, my article wouldn’t post, and I couldn’t get pictures to load…typical. After much frustration, I finally
accomplished my goal. I drove back home,
ate lunch, and tried to decide how I wanted to spend the rest of my day.
I have been spending a lot of time on my horse. We have loped what feels like a million miles. I have logged that roping sled around my
neighbor’s hay field for hours. But I
really haven’t spent a lot of time working on myself. I decided it was time to bust out the roping
dummy. When I was little and I really
wanted to rope like my daddy, he used to tell me that when I could rope the dummy
100 times in a row consistently without missing, he would let me start chasing
cattle horseback. I used to rope the
dummy every single day. When I was in high school and college, that's what we used to do for fun. I can remember sitting up
all night when I was in college, drinking beer with my buddies and roping the
dummy until the sun came up. And it wasn’t
boring. We actually really enjoyed it. Now, looking back, I realize that when I was
spending my time roping the dummy for fun, I roped better than ever! I think we want to compete and win so badly
sometimes that we turn practice into a chore.
It really doesn’t have to be.
Thursday afternoon, I cranked up the tunes on stereo and decided to play HORSE. All by myself. Perfect practices are the key to success...think Daniel Green taught me that. Anyone can go out and toss the rope around, but it’s what you put into your practices that make them effective. That’s not to say you can’t have fun doing it. I believe that if you challenge yourself…punish yourself for mistakes made (push-ups, sit-ups, run laps for missing) and reward yourself for a job well done (drink a beer!), it'll be more beneficial to you in the long run. I like to play HORSE when I rope the dummy. Every time you miss, you get a letter (first miss earns you an "H', second miss earns you an "O" and so on). If you miss enough times to spell out HORSE than you lose. If you play with one or more people, the object of the game is to be the last one standing…if you spell HORSE, you’re out (they play this in basketball a lot). However, to play alone, I try to rope the dummy 100, 200, or 500 times in a row. If I miss, I get a letter. If I spell HORSE before reaching my goal, I start over. Trust me, when you are roping to 500, you don’t want to miss! Since I hadn’t picked up my rope and roped the dummy in a while, I decided to just rope to 100. The only letter I earned was an “H”, so I was pretty satisfied. When I rope the dummy, I really try to challenge myself. I’ll try to throw my rope after one swing, or I’ll change it up and swing three times. I move around a lot. Sometimes I’ll try to rope really close to the dummy, other times I try to throw a little farther than I’m comfortable with. I’ll also move myself to different positions on the side of the dummy, roping from close to his side to farther away and even straight behind it or to the right of it. I don’t like to stand in one spot when I rope the dummy because unless you are riding a FANTASTIC horse and the cattle all run exactly the same, you are not going to be roping from the same spot every time. You need to able to rope consistently from all angles and distances if you want to win.
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| Building a loop |
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| The swing |
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| The delivery (notice how I am reaching) |
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| The catch |
When I finished up on the dummy, I decided to go ahead and
exercise my horse. I pulled him out of
his stall, brushed him, and saddled him up.
There is something about having the day to yourself to decide what you
want to do that is so satisfying. There
are a million little honey-do’s that I’ve been “meaning” to get done for about
a year now. One was to take the rawhide
covered stirrups off of my saddle and replace them with a set of Monels that were
on my old ranch saddle. Since I had the
time, I went ahead and got that done. I
like the rawhide stirrups on my saddle, but the Monels are a little heavier and
not quite as deep. They just fit better and are slightly more
comfortable in my opinion. I climbed on and Solo and I
made our typical trip around the neighbor’s hay field…twice around in the right
lead, twice around in the left lead, and once around at a walk to cool him
down. I then logged the sled around for
a while. I am noticing a lot of improvement
in the way that he is handling the sled.
He is really starting to quarter out well and although sometimes he is a
little lazy, when I ask him to, he is facing really fast and hard (Note: Facing is the part of the run where your horse spins around to face the steer which, in most ropings, signals the flagger to drop the flag and stop the clock) . I feel like a lot of people don’t put a lot
of value on a horse’s facing ability. I
am a firm believer that a horse that faces fast can shear some time off of the
flag. You want to have a horse that is
well rounded in all areas and that takes constant work! That includes being solid in the box, scoring
well, running hard, handling cattle well, and being able to face hard and keep
that rope tight for a flag.
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| Roping the sled |
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| Box work on a young horse |
The “dry work” (work off of cattle) has been really
effective, but I am now ready to get Solo in the arena and get him behind some
steers. If we don’t get any rain in the
next few days and the weather stays nice, I may be able to get somewhere to
practice this next week. I’m excited for
the progress that we’ve been making and the progress that we’ll continue to
make as long as I stay motivated and positive!
God puts ideas in our heads for a reason…I’m so ready to make this dream
come true!
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