While talking to my brilliant & kindly HPS today about the Summary Shitcanning from The Barn and whether I want to teach there at all assuming the one student they told me I could still have comes back from a sabbatical, she said, wisely, that as far as long-term goals, it sounded as though I still need to decide what I want.
I know what I don't want. I don't want any more crazy - not dumb & crazy, not brilliant but crazy, none of it. I don't want random dressings-down, insane horses I'm afraid to put my students on, or bizarre business plans.
In short, unless someone is ridiculously stable (LOL SEE WHAT I DID THERE), I don't want to work for anyone else again. I don't want to have a big barn with a lot of show-oriented riders and eventually have to hire someone else to do what I can't (I never showed high level, and it's been twenty years since I jumped anything taller than two-six).
I don't want to have so many lessons that it starts to feel like an assembly line, or so that rescheduling is almost impossible, or so that my hypothetical horses never get a day off.
I don't want to have to depend on teaching for a living - it's too feast-or-famine for my Scottish financial comfort.
I want a small barn - five schooling horses and no more than ten boarders, some of whom may or may not take lessons. I want to cater to adults who don't care if they ever show. I want a few kids who basically become equine slave labor through their teens. I want boarders who are there to ride, not to try to throw the latest training sensation at everyone else or allow their ill-behaved spawn to run wild through the barnyard. Hell, I don't even care if they ride all that much, so long as someone cares for and interacts with their horse.
Of course, the next question is how the hell I make this happen. Time to consult the oracles.
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