Friday, January 4, 2013

Goals and Resolutions... 2013 Style


 

As I write this in the wee hours of the first morning of 2013, it strikes me how odd and wonderful perspective is.  This time of year brings about our tendency to reflect, both on the positive and the negative.  Its interesting how if I were to judge my past year simply on the goals I laid out for myself, it would have been quite the failure.  Yet in that year, I accomplished more than I could have hoped for, had an extremely successful season with my mare, made lots of mistakes, and did lots of things well, and most importantly, ended the year with myself and my loved ones (both two and four legged) happy and healthy.  So really, what more could I ask for?


Anyhow, this post will be long enough without me rambling, so lets cut to the chase.  I set resolutions (personal things I'd like to change or do better) and goals (riding related things to work towards achieving).  The division makes sense to me, so lets just leave it at that.  To view how the 2012 goals and resolutions went, click here.  I gave it its own post because, well, this one ended up being really fricken long.


Resolutions for 2013:
1) Go to the gym twice a week.  
I tried (and was moderately successful) this in 2012, and it went well till about mid-summer when it started to go down hill.  Crazy work load at school dumped this baby right off the tracks.  So starting in February (for life-related reasons) I would like to go to the gym 2x/week.

2) Focus more on health and nutrition.
Not too many resolutions for myself.  Last year I got sucked into the festivities and went WAY overboard in terms of goal setting and resolution making.  This year its simple- eat better and exercise more.  I know 'focus on health and nutrition' is vague, but really awareness is the precursor to change, as awareness leads to information.  I'm not 100% sure WHAT changes I need to make regarding my eating habits, so for now I'd like to just be aware of them.

Goals for 2013:
1) Keep Cadence sound, healthy, and happy with her work.
Really, this is the most important one.  If I get nothing else done this year except for this goal, I can count myself lucky.

2) Keep RFTGU going until 2014.
2014 seems so far away, and yet I guarantee that at this time next year I'll look back on that statement and laugh.  I've loved this journey that's arisen through keeping this blog going, and while I'm completely aware that from a social media perspective this blog is an inconsequential little nothing, my sole goal here has always been to simply keep a record of my life with horses.  So from that perspective I think thus far its been relatively successful.  Next year will bring some major changes to my life, changes that will probably cause this blog to be moved to the back burner.  All I can hope is that next year I'll be sitting in this same position writing about another successful year of blogging, riding, and well... life, but you never know what the future holds.

3) Compete at first level, and do more than one dressage show.
We seem to do one dressage show in the spring, and then kind of forget about it... but now that I have a (somewhat) trained horse who's on her way out of the green bean baby stage, we'll actually get to... providing things go as planned... have a somewhat normal season in which we do things like plan out what competitions we're going to go to more than one week in advance ;)

3) Compete in meter jumpers.
Show jumping is my least favourite part of eventing.  There, I've said it.  So really, I'd like to try to focus on it a little and improve that area a bit more.  I think having a show incentive would be a great push in the right direction. And 1m seems like a reasonable height, considering the fact that Training level might possibly if things go REALLY REALLY well be on the horizon for late in 2013, and that jumper courses are naturally a lot more technically challenging than stadium courses, so I definitely wouldn't want to go higher.  Ideally we'd start out with .96m jumpers to get a feel for 'real' jumper stuff and work our way up to the 1m classes.

4) Complete a T3D
Every year I like to set an ambitious, challenging yet not completely out of the realm of possibility (just out of the realm of LIKELY possibility) goal.  Shooting for the stars and all that.  If I were to be perfectly honest (and why wouldn't I? That's kind of the point of this blog...) running the training 3-day at the KHP would be like a dream come true.  Will I be supremely disappointed if it doesn't happen? No.  But it can't hurt to try.

So on that note, I hope everyone has a happy and healthy 2013, and I can't wait to see what this new year has in store!

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