Upcoming clinic

Calabar expressing my deep-rooted fear of public embarrassment

I confess I'm mildly terrified about doing a clinic. Here, let me get on my horse in front of a bunch of strangers and let them see all of my insecurities and troubles. Gah.

Maybe they will snicker behind their hands, or roll their eyes. Maybe they will shake their heads in pity. Or maybe, just maybe, we will all learn something.

Maybe my troubles, the things that bother me and that test my own resolve, will actually turn out to be bigger in my own head then they are when viewed by an audience.

Maybe they won't be, but I'm just saying there are other possibilities than total mortification.

Maybe something we learn will help someone else. Maybe something someone else learns will help us.

So if I follow the previous post with visualizing success, I need to think of being out there--naked with all my fears and anxieties exposed--turning that into something that teaches. Something that moves us--Bar and me--a few steps forward.

My heart may be pounding, but my gut says to trust him. Up at Slide, he went into a strange arena with lots of new horses, not to mention cows, and he did great. He stayed with me, listened to me, even when I was too afraid to let him run. Even when he ached to race past these tiny little Quarter Horses on his long Thoroughbred legs, he deferred to me.

He wants to learn, he wants to be ridden. He tells me this all the time.

I need to stop thinking of all that could go wrong, and believe in all the things that could go right.

And how far could we go with that? Very far indeed, I suspect.