Motivation

I think that motivation is a really interesting thing. We used to talk about it more as inspiration when I was growing up as a musician in a family of musicians but it's pretty much the same thing in this case.

As I was growing up I had constantly changing interests, like most kids I'm sure, and from one day to the next the thing that I was motivated to do could really change. I had a bunch of different hobbies and interests, had different pets, learned different things like sculpture and basically would be really, really into something for a few weeks to a few years off and on before moving on to something else. The only thing that really stuck around through all of that was horses but I never really got to do all of the things that I wanted to until recently and I think I filled in some of that want with other hobbies.

Over the last few years it's been all about horses, Katai in particular. I haven't taken on any new hobbies and have really focused on dressage and Katai as well as other important things in my life like being vegan (food, recipes, learning to make new things like brewing Kombucha etc), blogging,  spending time with friends, getting more fit, doing stuff with Veggie, focusing on my new job etc. It's been nice! It's nice to focus on one thing, its nice to not be spending money on picking up, and then dropping, a whole bunch of new things and it's all I really wanted.

So far my motivation hasn't really gone down. I've had small peaks and valleys and times where I'm just less motivated to ride but mainly it seems to be more about just laziness than anything else. However recently I just haven't been as motivated as I was and knew that something was nothing me but wasn't quite sure what it was. It's been a couple of months since I was motivated but at first I thought that the break when I was in WA for a week might help, then when I got back and got so sick of course I wasn't going to be motivated. The problem is that I just haven't been feeling like I'm really motivated and back into it even now that I'm feeling better.

In my musician family we used to talk about doing other things that would help with our motivation such as reading a good book, going to an art museum, spending time at a national park, going for a hike etc. Sometimes though it's just immersing yourself into the thing that you aren't feeling motivated to do even more that help increase your motivation. The problem is that it's tough to know which will help.

I think I finally figured out why I haven't been as motivated but I'm going to share more about that later. For now, the break last week and watching all of those talented ponies at the National Dressage Pony Cup was really good for my motivation.