Happy New Year!

I once again followed my favorite tradition of “whatever you do on New Year’s Day is what you’ll do the rest of the year” and got in a fantastic ride today. A cool, clear, Arizona winter day, spent with good friends and good horses…I can’t think of a better way to start the year.

So, my tongue-in-cheek term for New Year’s resolutions is “inebriated declarations of good intent.” Sometimes they’re too vague, or far-reaching, to be particularly useful or even realistically attainable. Sometimes they’re very predictable. (Let’s face it, right now we’re all still full of post-holiday cheese and day-of-the-week confusion, and are glaring daggers at our bathrooms scales, amirite?!? “Fitness” and “weight loss” tend to be chart-toppers for a reason.)

But there’s something to be said for goal-setting, and heaven knows I often need some kind of framework and plan of action to focus my squirrel brain, so maybe for a change, it wouldn’t hurt to play around with a few resolutions/goals for the upcoming year.

• Take more riding lessons with Liberty. I found an instructor who I really like, and although she is based out of Payson, she travels to the Valley for clinics and lessons. Just one lesson with her already has made a difference in my riding and in working on Liberty’s biomechanics.
• Remember that it’s okay to say no. The latter part of the year heaped a ton on my plate — my own doing, and some of it I was really glad for and does take a high priority, like extra work — but I have to remind myself that it’s okay to not jump on every single project or idea that comes across my path, and when I do, to set boundaries and realistic expectations.
• Finish my Masterson certification sometime this year. I really dropped the ball on this in the latter half of 2021 because I allowed it to drop too low on the priority list.
• Incorporate more arena work into my weekly riding routine. It’s hard for me to trailer out and condition during the week because of the time involved (and kind of hard to drive and take down customer orders at the same time…) but I can manage a trip to the barn and an arena ride.
• Keep getting off and hiking/running with Liberty on our solo rides.
• Keep tracking mileage. For the first time ever, I managed to track all of my rides/miles this year. I didn’t get so ambitious as to detail them out, mind you…but on my year-at-a-glance calendar, I wrote down our mileage every time we rode. (And to tag on to that…increase our yearly mileage. We ended 2021 with 592 miles, a combo of training and competition rides. [If I had known we were that close to 600, I would have snuck in a final 8 miles.]
• Do more gluing on of boots. I want to feel as confident in my glue job (or at least know that, failing a faulty tube of glue, I’ve done everything right on my end to make sure those things are staying on) and its reliability as I do with running the strap boots.
• No major truck repairs? (Okay, this one is more of a wishful plea that the vehicular gremlins behave themselves, or make their own resolution to not give me too much grief this year. Or confine their grief to shenanigans with my rearview mirror thermostat display.)
• Remind myself to not rush my ride plan. I have a goal in my head of wanting to get to 100s…but my gut is reminding me to take my time and make sure I’ve got the foundation laid really solidly. This foundation building is the time for ironing out minor quirks and doing our problem-solving now, and that rushing ahead won’t do myself or my mare any favors. We had a really good run this fall, so I want to keep that positive momentum going and keep steadily forging ahead.
• Finally…blog more frequently. If I’ve been able to manage once a month for as long as I have…maybe set my goal to do twice a month posts. (Oh, look, this makes one post done for January already! Also, see above adage of “whatever you do on New Year’s…so, riding and blogging…sounds good to me!)