I feel like my life has been a series of false starts. It's almost like once I get things going well and building up steam, everything derails - in some cases catastrophically - and I have to start over, again. Maybe that's why one of my favorite symbols is the mythological phoenix. Wait, there are no maybes about it - that IS the reason why I love the phoenix. If I'm not a human example of a phoenix then I don't know who is.
I came into the beginning of this year flying high with plans for my horses. I had a couple of different show schedules lined up and was finally going to jump into the world of shows. Cazador, my Spanish Mustang colt, was going to be one heck of a breed ambassador this year. Bo was finally going to stand at stud up here. Then the derailment happened. I won't go into details, but everything came crashing down and for several months it was all I could do to just survive. Once again, my horse dreams went up in smoke.
This has happened before, most noteably in 2008 when I lost a week old foal to a massive freak summer blizzard. For a long time after that, I merely went through the motions with my horses. I'd feed them, then go home. All my plans for them had seemed to vanish with that little colt. Then Cazador came into my life and many months later I credited him with reawakening my horse dreams and inspiring me to make plans again.
Summer is now coming to an end and I'm frustrated that yet another year has gone by, crashed by another false start. Now I'm starting fresh - again. I find myself very hopeful though, because I think this start - this rise from the ashes - is the one. The one start that won't be false. I'm hopeful that this really is the start to a new life.
