Completely weird.

I had a completely weird experience today, which I am not happy about. I swapped my regular Wednesday off so I could have this Saturday off instead, in preparation for the Area I Annual Meeting. For whatever reason, I woke up in a funk. I've been sick for almost two weeks now, with no sign of improving, and I struggle with wintertime anyway, so I wasn't surprised. I battled my way through the miserable arctic weather while cleaning stalls this morning, went back and forth about whether or not I really wanted to go to the meeting, decided not to go, then decided at the last second that I really DID want to go. I went all the way up there, found the place after getting repeatedly lost (Springfield is a GPS black hole), got to the meeting, and was suddenly overwhelmed with the prospect of my total alone-ness. People all around me were calling out to each other, embracing, talking animatedly to people they hadn't seen in a long time, and all sitting down together in their little groups at round tables. I wandered around, looking for a friendly face, anyone I knew. Nope, nobody. Not a single person. I felt very much like I was walking in on somebody's family holiday party, a total stranger amongst a huge group of friends. It was weird, and uncomfortable, though it was certainly no one's direct doing. Those of you who have met me know that I don't even know what being socially awkward means for the most part. I'm that weird person that just walks up to total strangers and introduces myself and makes new friends, it's just what I do. I've always been that way, I don't really get why people have trouble making friends or starting conversations because I never do. But for some reason, today I felt like I was interrupting. There were so many people seeing others that they hadn't seen in so long, and I just... wasn't a part of that. I felt weird, like I shouldn't be there. So... I left.

In retrospect, I'm really not sure what came over me. I've been feeling really weird about my ex-fiancee and missing her quite a lot, and I think that had a large part to do with it. She always came with me to things like this, and without her around it's been like a giant black hole when it comes to things like shows and banquets and travel and whatnot. I also felt kind of dirty, like I don't deserve the Year-End awards I'm supposed to be getting. I mean, my last act of the season was to break my horse, why should I get recognized for that? That's clearly not the actual case, but I feel odd about accepting awards in front of people when I clearly don't deserve them.

Have you ever felt weird about stuff like that? I've never in my life had that kind of an experience. Maybe I'm just having an off day.





But, in other news, I am happy to report that Gogo went on her first "hack"! It wasn't much, just a little wander around the barn on flat ground for about 10 minutes, but it was outside and it was very enjoyable. She was very quiet and happy to be out, and we even went over and looked at the little XC jumps that we have on the property:



I'm hoping to integrate a little "hack" into our daily workweek. I think it'll be very good for her brain to get out and just meander a little bit. Once she starts trotting for 15 minutes (this coming Thursday), we can start to add incline work on the treadmill, so I also hope with the vet's blessing to start walking up tiny little hills again sometime soon.



I dunno what's gotten into me today. But little hacks and things like that seem a lot more important to me nowadays than awards.