Oof.
Not the best day, or ride. Standby for pity party. Actually, fuck it. Hang on one sec more, Imma pour myself a bourbon because it's been one of those. Alrighty, now I can start the pity party.
My original intent today was to wake up early and go ride in the morning before work, but there was an early morning meeting scheduled today that made that not possible. No problem, since I would be able to be done with work in the afternoon, with plenty of time to ride after. Early morning meeting went fine, I helped get the groceries in, and I dialed into my team meeting not expecting anything out of the ordinary. This was my first mistake of the day. (Wait until the last one, though. It's even dumber, and more expensive.) I won't go into the exact details, because A) I'd like to try and maintain some level of privacy, and B) as a rule, I'm not terribly fond of airing my work dirty laundry out in public. But the executive summary is this: I was asked about some goings-on in our test environment, which brought to light that our development may come to a screeching halt, with a very long lead time to recover and become productive again. While we're in the midst of a project that we're trying to launch by the end of the year. And worst of all? It was going to be 100% my fault, and I had done nothing to mitigate, warn, or plan for.
You know, the kind of shit people lose their jobs for.
In an attempt to try and get ahead(??) of my impending unemployment, I sent a series of messages to various Important People™, and since by this time, it was lunch time, nobody was responding. With nothing else productive to do while I stared at Slack waiting for responses, I did the only logical thing--had a panic attack. And no, I'm not speaking figuratively. It was a genuine, honest-to-Goddess meltdown. I have the heart rate data to prove it. Poor Zhi, who was out of the house at a doctor's appointment walked in the door while I was midway through losing my shit. Not a good look on me, if I'm honest. By and large, I tend to be pretty good in a crisis, but for some reason, this particular issue was a bridge too far for my addled psyche. I finally managed to get it together and get back to trying to dig myself out of the mess I had created, when I finally had a chance to get on a call with someone who knew what the hell was going on. And, fortunately for my job, but decidedly less so for my ego, I had completely misunderstood the situation. Everything was fine. There was to be no great cataclysm in our Test environment that I has completely failed to prevent. Good news for my employment prospects. Bad news for my endocrine system. The rest of the work day was fairly uneventful, but honestly, I was cooked, so I was more than happy to knock off early and go to the barn to see my pony.
Since I knew I was cooked, I made the conscious decision to not work on too much today, mainly keep things to a walk, and work on making sure he was using his hind end, and not leaning on the reins, as well as work on some rein back. Difficult to say whether this was just me being in an overall bad state today, or if there was a genuine issue, but I never did really feel like I successfully got him light in the bridle today. I tried all the tricks: lots of transitions, halt to rein back, counterflexing, exaggering the bend, etc., but it was one of those rides where not a goodamn thing you do seems to work. Deciding that discretion was the better part of valor, I called it quits, and hopped off, and went to go muck out the arena. Here's where my more expensive, and dumber mistake happened. While I was mucking out the arena, Selten rubbed his face on his leg, managed to step on his reins, set back, and broke the bridle. It snapped just above where the crown piece joins with the cheek piece. I do not think there is a way to fix it. Fortunately, Selten is OK, and I'm OK. Unfortunately, this was my trainer's bridle that she had graciously loaned me from her now-retired GP horse, and I feel like a grade A asshole that my horse broke it on my watch. Of course, I will be replacing the bridle. That goes without saying. I called and let her know what happened, and she was really cool about it, but honestly, I still feel terrible about it, to say nothing of the fact that my stupid ass called her the night before championships to let her know that my stupid ass had broken her bridle. I know it's just a bridle, and I know I'll make it right, but I'm all kinds of out of sorts today, so I think it's probably best that I wrap this up, get over myself, get some sleep, and start over in the morning. Hopefully tomorrow, I will come to you with 100% less whining.
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