#31 Feeling bad about slacking isn't motivating.

So I've totally slacked off on my resolution to do this once a day. I am torn between wanting to work at something that is hard, doing one thing everyday, and not getting worked up about things I NEED to do. It is a tough balance and I clearly haven't figured out the happy medium. I've got a couple of longer form essays stewing. Here is draft one of the first:

Learning to relax
Many people find hill climbing the hardest part about riding a bike - once the balance and skinned knee issues are dealt with. When faced with a distant summit, the natural reaction is to tighten. Your hands clamp down on the handle bars, which tightens your arms, which drags your shoulders concave, which makes breathing hard. Loosing your breath sacrifices your stoking rhythm and before your know it, you're walking and/or miserable. It seems like an inevitable downfall but if you take the chain reaction apart, it's actually quite easy to derail. Unclench your hands. This makes it impossible to tighten your arms and collapse your abs and shoulders. Which means iz no problem. Keeping your gaze a few feet in front, instead of all the way up also helps with the psychological impact of overcoming such a hurdle.

Likewise, when I ride, fear, stress, confusion all make me tighten. When a rider is tight, it is impossible for a horse to move energetically and in a correct way. So the fear, stress or confusion just snowballs as the relationship between horse and rider is reduced to discomfort (luckily most horses will take bribery in exchange for comfort anytime). Unlike the bike, my equestrian tension is routed in my back. Solution - focus all my energy on relaxing my back - result everyone is more happy.

These are two pretty concrete examples but what seems like a more important realization of learning to relax is: once the source of the tension is unclenched I can learn. If I focus on relax while riding, it is impossible to get frustrated by a difficult instruction. Frustration usually shuts my brain down and keeps me from being able to understand the work at hand. So while a difficult session would otherwise be unproductive, a session based on relax goes deep into uncharted territory.

It takes a serious relinquishment of ego to work on relax and nothing else. It means setting aside every other goal and expectation and being the moment. But it also means that there is no room for internal judgement statements "like, I can't do this," or "I'll never be good at this." Those are not relax, not productive - just ego fighting for a staring role.

Which is why, I am torn about forcing myself to write everyday or relaxing into writing. This metaphore needs more work before I can translate it into this hobby.

#30 Learning to relax leaves things undone.

#29 sleepy, unmotivated. Rather plan for tomorrow.

#27 Making progress by looking up. Imagine!

#26 Always eat too much. Too fast.

#25 Done stalling, today. Back on task.

#24 Doing things each day is hard.

#23 Sunshine defrosts hidden places. Loosens joints.

#22 New friends are fun and exhausting.

#21 Can't keep up all the time.

#20 Wore red shoes. Now onto pink.

#19 Almost always prefer home to elsewhere.

#18 Childhood dreams come true. Big beast.

Meet Moose. Beastie. AKA Renaldo.

My little pony! After a few twenty something years of feeling somewhat directionless in my personal life, I decided that I should go on a quest to either take up hobbies that I had left behind (and missed) or start doing things that I always said that I wanted to do. A big one was to take up riding. I grew up riding on my Aunt's horse farm in Cranston. About two years ago, I got a chance to start taking lessons. It was really fun getting back into it, this time with a better, adult perspective on the relativity of perfection...

After a year of taking lessons, the owner of my favorite lesson steed offered me a deal and before I knew it, I was had my very first horse: Renaldo. An 11 year-old German, born and bred, Westphalian. Renaldo's claim to fame: he's huge. 18 hands at the withers. That means he is 6 feet tall at the shoulder. When he puts his head up in the air he can clear 7.5 feet easy. Big dude.

Some of Renaldo's favorite things in life:
1. bananas
2. all other things edible
3. getting scratched on the face
4. being done with work
5. rolling in a pile of fresh shavings
6. rolling in the mud
7. annoying other horses
8. chewing on anything in reach of his stall that isn't meant to be chewed on

Less favorite things in life:
1. hard work
2. loud noises
3. steam monsters
4. getting scratched on the belly
5. not getting treats in a timely fashion
6. being ignored
7. being confused
8. new places, things, sites, or really anything unexpected.

That's right. He's a bit of a pea brain. But he's a handsome devil and I am pretty lucky to spend sunny afternoons going for a ride and spoiling him rotten. Facing passions that have been put on hold is pretty scary but I am so glad that I took on this particular challenge.

#17 Stayed in bed for twelve hours.

#16 Rumors of spring. Silvertip. Perfume. Joy.

#15 Go far. Wide. Return to simple.

#14 Today, staying afloat matters most. Tredding.

#13 Thinking out loud takes us far.

#12 Cold winter quiet. Slows me down.

Winter sunset at Alyson's Orchard in Walpole, NH

#11 Me likes the road less traveled.