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A rant about work

I'm having trouble working with people who don't want to be in your business but are also trying to be in everything you're doing. If I am in charge of creating digital assets for a project, than maybe give me feedback, drop a comment here and there- I don't try to take over you tasks. At the end of the day I feel indifferent about it because there is a deadline, and it's having things completed on time regardless of who did it. Just don't come back to me with an email saying "I'm having trouble managing everything on my plate, and that I need to take things one step at a time". The actions I'm seeing makes it seem like you are, in deed, not taking anything slow and you are more than capable managing different projects at the same time. I understand people having different capacities at balancing mental health and life, etc. I believe in prioritizing mental health and self care first. I just don't like it when someone belittles my intelligence and makes an effort to appear a certain way, while acting a different way.

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Little progress, leaps of faith.

I'm progressing with my boy Merle. If you're new here, Merle is a 8 year old quarter horse who's been with me since October of 2024. During my lessons, he's spooked and I fell off twice. I was fine both times and needed to recover from the shock and (once) from hip pain, but otherwise I am great. Since becoming his owner, knowing little about taking care of a horse and falling off of him, I grew afraid of him.

Since January, I had sudden moments of anxiety and fear when I would be around him. These feelings felt irrational. It didn't make sense that only a week ago I would be walking beside him and now I fear for my life walking with him. I realized that I needed to take a step back- several steps back, and go back to ground work. I want to begin again right. I want to practice horsemanship that I can be proud of which is to develop a stronger bond with Merle on the ground. I believe that if he doesn't see me as a leader or look to me for guidance while on the ground, how do I expect him to do so while in the saddle.

Today, after a month of working with him, I finally feel a lot more comfortable. At times I have to stop the exercise and hand over the lead rope to my trainer to give myself a breather. But I believe going slow and steady and working on strengthening that bond will help me in the long run. I can already see it today where he does listen to me, but he will be opinionated and let me know when he is frustrated. I have to learn to allow that to happen. After all, horses do have minds of their own.

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Four Horses, details from a 17th century Persian manuscript.

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Falls, nerves, anxiety...where do I go from here?

I didn't realize learning to grow with my horse meant I had to trust him again. Good horse(wo)menship means building a bond and a partnership with your horse. Getting him to trust you even more than you trust him.

Trusting in general is hard, and doing it with a creature who doesn't speak your language is harder.

Every time I go visit my horse to do groundwork, I'm thinking "How can you trust me if I can't even trust you?" I started developing that feeling after my second fall. After I thought I was ok riding him with no stirrups and just walking in a circle; what we have been doing for the last few weeks. I came in that day prepping myself to get back into trot work. It was a windy and snowy day. There was a lot of noice outside the barn. As we walked around in a 20 meter circle, I knew the moment I felt his shoulder muscles twitch - something was going to happen. Regardless, I brushed those feelings to the side and I told myself that it's fine. We're going to continue to focus on keeping my legs wrapped around his barrel and pushing him through the walk. I had to push the thoughts of spooking or bolting deep down into that black chest in my head. This was not the time to think about spooking. Little did I know, another horse in my lesson spooked (he had a mini jump), which set my horse off. I ended up falling on my hip. I am fine now, 2 weeks later, but that fall has made me more anxious to be around my horse.

I felt like a failure. I failed him. I was convinced that riding through his struggles was going no where for him... and me. It wasn't helping us grow together. I was even more convinced that trying to ride in the winter will not help. Therefore, my plan for the winter shifted to establish a relationship of trust from the ground up.

I wanted to focus on the following things:

Ground work; I need to do simple exercises with me so that he is always looking to me for the next step even if there are noises outside the barn.

Getting him under threshold; helping him to find his parasympathetic system and finding relaxation.

Have him come to me in times of uncertainty (if there's a boogyman in the shadows).

I can't ride him if he can't be relaxed or find a moment of relaxation when we are together. One of my trainers said that he's a good boy and he takes care of me, but he masks his fears and anxiety. He masked everything he's feeling so well that he carries a lot of tension in his body. I knew exactly what she was talking because I had those thoughts every time I would be around him. He was anxious and he wasn't looking to me for guidance or relaxation. I hope that by the end of the winter we can rewire him to feel that all we want from him is to relax and nothing more. I do not want him to feel that I expect him to ride with me and carry his burdens with him. I want him to feel that his burdens are my burdens and that by working together, those burdens can slowly disappear.

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“How do I trust you if you don’t know what your feet are doing”.

In one of Warwick Schiller’s videos, he says that there is one thing that people do around horses that they don’t even realize they’re doing ‘it’. They [person holding the lead rope] are stepping back when their horse steps towards them. He says that if that person who’s holding the lead rope doesn’t know what their feet are doing, how is the horse supposed to trust them. “How do I trust you if you don’t know what your feet are doing”. 

When I heard that statement, all I could think about. That’s me. That is me in a nutshell around my horse. I was so afraid of making a mistake around him that I would always step back. Unsure and undecided. My trainer would tell me, your hand is near him, but your body is far. She would urge me, tell me get close. And I didn’t trust that. I didn’t trust that I can figure my way to a solution. I felt that I had no building blocks. No theory to fall back on. When I’m feeling unsure, I fall back on methodology, systems, data and my faith. Things that are a comfort to me. I didn’t know how to find those in my training with my horse, and so I fell back on uncertainty and my failure at not knowing. I felt that if I didn’t know how to just lead him, I have failed myself. I was digging myself into a pit of failure.

Getting rid of that mindset, out of that hole, is slow, and even though I have made so much progress within a week. I have a long way to go with my own development to get to where I want to be with my horse. So that he feels that I am a partner and we are both in it together. 

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A Year Later

I started riding in September of 2023. It's been almost a year now since I began that journey, and boy has it been a trying year. When people say animals can teach you a lot about yourself, it's the truth. There's been countless times where I've stared at my horse and started speaking to him, as if he would understand me. A lot of these times, I was doing something with my body that hindered what I was asking him to do. It is the smallest shift from your body that the horse will react to, ever if you didn't mean to shift your body to the left or right.

Riding is about letting go, letting go of the any muscles tenseness, letting go of control, and willing to listen, learn, make mistakes and keep going. There were times were I was struggling for the first half of my lesson, and the last 5 minutes I would finally understand the purpose of the exercise and what task I was asking my horse to perform. Be it moving the reins, or exhaling to halt the horse.

I'm excited to continue and improve my riding. Possibly document some thoughts here as well.

Till next time.

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Everything about this feels peaceful.

Photograph by Hyun Joo

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Gordon Parks, Untitled, New York, 1963

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Eid Mubarak to all my Muslim followers! May Allah accept all our deeds of worship from Ramadan and may we carry on the good behaviors and rituals we started. Hope you have a beautiful day inshallah! And if you’re like me, obligated to be at work or any other reason you’re having to miss your family time or Eid salah, I hope you find joy in the little things. Get some of your favorite ice cream, watch a good movie, gather your friends for some post festivity coffee, or just bring your non Muslim friends/co workers/ etc… some desserts or gifts to brighten their day and give you some happiness too!

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Godzilla

joshua_fuller_

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Typewriter Series #2518 by Tyler Knott Gregson

Text for Tired Eyes:

To be there to see it, the wings of geese in the lightlessness, the blur of hummingbirds roaring softly on summer porches, the earthquake of thunder on evenings where you swear dusk will never fade out.   Be for this, keep being, for there is music in all this, quietly it plays, almost inaudible, but the melody remains, be for this, and lend yourself to the perfect cacophony.

-Tyler Knott Gregson-