24/11/2020
I’m about to bring something very real to the table here, so please bear with me if this gets long....
Burn out is REAL and far too many of us in the industry glorify it.
STOP IT!
My entire life I’ve been described as someone who is a “hard worker”. As someone who would “do anything for her clients”. Someone who was “always there at the drop of a hat”. A people pleaser. A work till you drop business owner.
There were no business hours.....if I was awake I was available. Hell, if I was asleep I was available- phone always on loud, answer every email and every text. When you aren’t born into wealth trying to make it in this industry takes everything out of you. You answer every call. You take on clients you know were kicked out of farms bc they didn’t pay hoping this time will be different. You take on the problem horses. The dangerous horses. The horse no other trainer will touch because you NEED that check to get to the next month. To feed the dream. To keep pushing and grinding.
And you LIVE FOR IT! Your clients love you. Your horses are happy. Who cares if your personal relationships are failing? Who cares if you sleep 2-5 hours a night max bc the business still isn’t making enough, so in order to pay the bills and keep the clients happy you need to work a full day at the farm, then go immediately to the only night job that works with your hours and provides a steady dose of income but doesn’t let out until 3am. Then wake up every single day with a smile on your face ready to start again?
Who cares if you’ve lost a loved one? Who cares if you’ve gone through a terrible break up? Who cares if you’ve had a miscarriage? WHO FU***NG CARES BC YOUR CLIENTS ARE HAPPY AND YOU ARE LIVING THE DREAM!!! You can tuck all those things away and burry yourself in the work and none of them will ever know bc you wake up every day with a smile on your face ready to start again! You are a hard worker and people notice and one day it will go in your favor and you live for that!
Until one day you wake up and you are struggling to get out of bed on time to feed the horses. That’s ok you’re just tired. You struggle to ride the 5 horses a day and only manage to force yourself to ride half of them. That’s ok you’re just tired. You find reasons to cancel lessons- it’s too windy, it’s too cold, thank fu***ng god it’s raining today. And it’s ok everyone understands you work SO HARD and you’re just tired so you need a day to rest.
More caffeine. Work harder. You’re not tired you’re being lazy. So you push through! Everyone sees how you push through exhaustion! They bring you a red bull or a coffee when they show up to ride and you think “wow they really care”- but no one ever offers a day off. You go on like this day after day, year after year, until all off a sudden you hate everything about the industry you love and the dream you have worked so damn hard for.
You can’t figure out why you have to force yourself to go down to the barn. You can’t figure out why you don’t want to ride. “I’ll hop on him tomorrow” turns into weeks of not sitting on anything in the barn......
It is incredibly difficult being someone who has always been so happy and so hard working to find yourself in a position of just not giving a single f**k. You start referring your lesson students to other trainers in the area. Your boarder buys her own farm and rather that fill the spots you leave them vacant. Another leases out her horse to have a family, that spot stays empty too. It’s too much work and you just can’t do it anymore.
Burn out.....burn out is real. Depression is real. Exhaustion to the point of insanity is so so real. There is nothing glamorous about working yourself to death. There is nothing to be celebrated in working so hard at something you love to the point you start to dread waking up to it every day.
And do you know what makes this realization so much worse? Petty drama from the community in which you have tried for years to thrive on your own. There are so many wonderful people in the equestrian world, I have never been more thankful to a close friend, Hilary Gibbons-Neff , who has helped me realize again how much I love teaching and being in a friendly barn atmosphere and allowed me the opportunity to do it again.
But there are people who feed on the demise. Who stand proud in their “successful barns” and find delight in small jabs that knock you down a peg after you’ve finally started to see the light at the end of the dark tunnel. Apparently one needs to publicly announce the ending of an era around here to just be left the hell alone with the realization of their personal downfalls and failures.
But there’s an upside.....small minded people will always be such, small minded. But those of us who dream big, who are kind, who keep our heads down and work hard- and finally realize the difference between being a hard worker and working yourself to death- we grow. We sit back, we assess, we figure out where we went wrong and we start again, eventually, when we are ready.
Burn out is real. Depression is real. Working yourself to death is real. Be kind. Mind your own business. And stop glamorizing overworking.
