Hi Friends!
Funny how time passes, eh?
Yawn! I know, this is a topic more people have ruminated & kibitzed about (yep, had to look up the spelling of that word – thank you Urban Dictionary for the modern use of the yiddish word) than one can count, and I certainty don’t think I have anything novel to add – but, really, it is amazing – isn’t it? All days simply aren’t created equal, nor are weeks, months or years… and while we seem to have sort of lived a lifetime since the Spring, it’s really just been 6 very, very technicolor months since we landed in the “new life”. While the 425,600 minutes is consistently our measure of a year, they just feel so different depending on your perspective.
Highly recommend a quick listen to “Seasons of Love” from RENT soundtrack... I’m listening to it right now.
So, one more statement of the timeline for those scoring at home. While many key steps transpired in Feb & March, the FIRST, REAL & OFFICIAL first day of our new life took place on April 11,2018. The historical plaque will read: on that day the Maven & Magie woke up in their bed at 123 Madison Street – a new house, a new town, and pretty minimal employment to start their new life. (Thank goodness for the Figs!) The Maven signed his final “check out” papers on Monday the 9th, we drove up on Tuesday the 10th, and we woke up on Wednesday the 11th to our brand new world. It was a big day in the #YearofWeir. (Might have to resurface the article in which that term was first coined for a future post).
While this funny, imaginary 1/2 anniversary is a topic on my mind this week because I want to recognize it, think about it, and appreciate it – I also want to move on – to the what comes next.
For me, the Fall has really kind of taken me by surprise. I knew that the gears would shift, but I didn’t know in which direction. Very, very happily for the first time in a very long time I discovered that September is kind of awesome. It looks and feels much like Summer, but everyone is getting back to the business at hand… and my new “business at hand” is horses. Pinch me!!! For the record, I’m making a public apology to the month of September for all the many years I openly loathed everything about it. As with so many things one resents and struggles with – it wasn’t you, it was me – and my perspective!
Trying to sort out why I’ve found the frenzy of the Fall such a surprise, I think I was so focused on making the utmost of the Summer, and since we’d never been here for the Fall, I just didn’t think about it all. It was clear only in that it would be absolutely, positively not like it used to be in our old life. And, very, very happily that is totally true. However, now that we’re in it – I definitely imagined it would be longer, slower, quieter and that we’d have a lot more time to do stuff… road trips, apple picking, pumpkins, porch time.. .maybe even a little hike!
Let’s face it, the reason that the Fall we’re living is more frenzied than the Fall I vaguely imagined is… me and my work, and the plans I’ve made to accomplish my goals for the horses. It’s literally all good (and totally of my own design, for which I’m profoundly grateful), but it’s definitely “a thing”. Continuing with my mission to meet as many people in my new work community as possible while I can still claim to be the new kid at the TRF, I planned my first trip to kick off pretty shortly after the racing season ended. I started with an interest in reaching out to our donors in VA and MD, and a goal of seeing more of our farms and meeting more of my colleagues who are caring for the horses in our herd, and it evolved into a 1900 mile, 13 day roadtrip which was filled to the brim with nonstop people – an amazing number of my besties from Philly to Chapel Hill (photos in my last post, continued below) and an incredible array of individuals who are totally dedicated to the horses of the TRF caring for them and supporting the work we do to care for them. I was totally impressed and inspired – and I learned so much!
At this point in my post, I feel sure I’m droning on.. and not sure which way to go. I really want to break the “online diary” approach that has become my blogging mainstay, and I aspire to be more reflective with a glimmer of hope that something I’ve experienced may resonate and be helpful in some way to one of my peeps out there patiently following this little experiment.
So, I’m going to just say no to the temptation to share my first TRF Road Trip itinerary, and I will include a bunch of my horsie photos below so you can take your own tour. And, trying to take the less boring fork in the road, I’m going to end with something that at least hints at being thoughtful…
As I met with so many friends along the way of my travels, I caught up with a bunch who didn’t quite know how the whole magical story had come together, since only a rather edited version of the whole process appeared on Facebook. On the highly curated FB it looked like: A. we put our house on the market, B. we bought a house, C. we sold our house, and D. I landed in my dream job. So simple! Ha! You know the duck, looking so calm above the water with those little webbed feet madly paddling below the surface? Yea, that was us. While all of those things happened, more or less in that order, there was also a whole lot of “leaping and the net will appear” going on… not to mention the emotional growing pains of uprooting ourselves and extracting ourselves from a life we loved and were very, very entrenched in.
Anyhow, here’s the thoughtful bit... as I found myself telling the “whole story” to a bunch of friends during my trip, I heard this exchange happen a couple times :
- Friend asks “but really, how did you do it? how did this all happen?”
- Magpie answers “we just listened to what we knew.” (Honestly, I was as surprised as anyone to hear that come out of my mouth.)
And yes, I think that’s really it. We simply, totally and absolutely knew we were no longer where we were supposed to be. We knew a change – a big change – was what we needed. There were absolutely a zillion things we didn’t know, but we focused on what we did… and I guess that made all the difference.
For now, I’ll sign off at the end of this very long rambling post (Game of Thrones beckons.. .and yes, Winter IS Coming) to say this:
Listen to what you know. Don’t try to un-know what you know.
Them’s my 2 cents.
Happy Pumpkin Season – next post will likely to be coming at you from the Bluegrass State!
XXOO
M
