Horses R Us

Happy Olympics Week!

If you know me, you know I LOVE the Olympics. Every two years, I am obsessed with watching them, especially since the last few Olympics have had major meanings, (and life changes) for me. This year, the Olympics has even more meaning since I've helped put together parts of the USEF's material for them and I know more people there.

This year, the Olympics have also made me realize how involved I am in the horse world lately. When I was actually competing with my horses, I was pretty deep into the industry, but I honestly can't say I was this far into it. I definitely spent a lot of time with both my horses and my friends that were also involved in horses, but I always had an outlet to escape for a few hours, even if it was just school. 

At school, I was a somewhat normal person. People knew I was involved with horses but it wasn't what defined me for those 6-8 hours a day. Funnily enough, back then, I wished that it would have defined me. But now as I've "grown up" (huh?) and moved on from hoping that anything except my talents define me, horses and sports describe.... well.... me.

I'm not going to lie, I basically live and breathe our equine friends these days. While I don't see an actual horse up close and personal most days, even though I work at the Horse Park, my life is full of them. 

In the mornings, I usually have an equine-type of text on my phone from Twitter (a few sources I follow with my mobile notifications), when I'm driving to work, I pass by at least three farms depending on the way I go, then I go to the USEF, and on the way home, I usually drive down Old Frankfort Pike to avoid traffic.

I do go to the gym for about an hour almost every day and don't do the horse thing there but then I go home to a house that I share with two other people that work in the industry. Even when I don't really talk to them, I am either looking up news on the horse front or writing an equine based article. Basically, my life is horses 23/7 (taking off the gym hour).

A few years ago when I was nearing an equine burn out, I would have hated this lifestyle, but these days I love it. I'm definitely not involved as much competition-wise as I was back then (okay, not at all) and I'm missing actually messing with horses but even without that, I'm still just as deep in it as I was during my big years.

However, this also opens up more life questions about where exactly I want to go after my internship. But I've decided that other than doing a few simple things, I'm not worrying about that until the Fall.

Either way, I'm almost positive I'll keep up my Horses R Us theme that I have going on now because I really can't see any way to avoid it. 

Like the mob, the horse industry always sucks you in and never lets you get too far away.