As with everyone else these days, life is weird.

I am grateful to still be employed in a company that continues to do well and for whom I can work remotely. But. For varying reasons, I have spent two months working more than I ever did in Before Times, and with work/life balance that is questionable at best, nonexistent at worst. Good weeks, 60 hours. Bad weeks, 100+. That is not a typo.

Unfortunately, I have never kept the horses a secret at work, and I work in an area of the country where no one has horses. I’m at the barn four evenings a week. I don’t take my computer, but will check emails and messages on my phone to respond as needed. As my workload has increased, I’ve ended up pushing back on requests from colleagues, who evidently are frustrated that I have time to go to the barn but not time to handle a non-mission-critical item. Since none of these conversations are going directly to me, I’m at a loss and will be discontinuing any mention of life outside of work except for a few select people. It sucks.

Any goals for Polly this year have been thrown completely out the window. I would like her to continue to be a good equine citizen, and I want to continue to build our relationship. I’m getting on when it feels like the right thing to do. We’re doing some groundwork, we’re doing a lot of small steps occasionally.

Confetti and I headed back into the parks when they opened up. She was awkward on the hills and earned herself hock injections, with Pentosan to come soon. We’ll know in a month or so where that puts us. In hindsight, I should have kept her on the Pentosan and done more work myself to deal with my anxiety around needles. It’s time.

I committed to buying a trailer. It’ll be a few hours north to get it, so that’s on hold, but fingers crossed it works out. Small choices for the future that I want. I am grateful for a socially-distanced sport where the parks are fairly quiet most days.

In my non-pony world, I’m handling covid anxiety by dealing with it in small and manageable chunks. We go out on grocery runs once every week or so, either hitting all the stores some weeks or the bare minimum other weeks. My partner and I are both at companies where “afk for the morning, grocery run” is socially acceptable. Weekday shopping is easiest. Mornings after restock is best. If I were working less I’d be cooking more, but a lot of days we order food instead. I’ve decided that being neurotic about cleaning everything all the time after shopping runs is not working for me, so we do a reasonable pass, leave some things alone, call it good enough. I don’t claim it’s the safest or best option. It’s just where I’ve settled for right now.

I do wear a mask anytime I’m out, though less so at the barn since I’m rarely within ten feet of anyone. Again: I’m not advocating this option nor suggesting it’s a wise move, but I stress it less in wide open spaces than I do at the grocery store.

Our local endurance ride has been cancelled for the year and I’m grateful. It was the right call. I’m not sure if the less-local one will follow suit given a late fall timeline. I’m not sure if I’ll be comfortable volunteering at it. If I’m back at work in the city, probably not. If I’m still remote, maybe.

More updates as work settles down, hopefully. This is a good time to be documenting.