A Letter For Yourself

Our lives are a constant state of change.
The places around us
The people around us
The circumstances around us.
We find new people to love.
Some people we love will leave us.

And we change too.

With so much change always flowing,
It can be hard to know what to hold on to:
The rocks you cling to for stability, safety, and happiness.

We need to remember that core deep inside us.
The essential self: the most important part of our souls.
What makes up that soul?
What do we value the most?
What connections must we never lose, no matter how things flow around us?

Every experience shapes us and teaches us
But that core should remain solid and strong.

We aren't the same person we were as a child, or as a teenager, or as a college student
Because everything around our core shifts and flows.
But just because the surroundings change does not mean that your core should change.

I look back on elementary school and cringe at my failure to understand how others felt.
I look back to middle school and flinch at how I wouldn't stand up for myself.
I look back at college and roll my eyes at my hobo sense of style.
I look back at graduate school and am shocked by how easy it is to misread people.
I look back at a job interview an hour before and groan, thinking that I should have said everything better.

It's true that the gift of hindsight lets you look at things from a safe distance,
And it lets you see a larger part of the picture.
These lessons have helped me to grow
But they have not changed my true core.

They have made my core stronger.

Sometimes it's hard to know what our true core really consists of.
We might lose something that we thought was a part of our core
Only to discover that it was not.
It can be painful,
But pain is what helps us learn and grow.

It's hard to know what we must not lose.
What we must fight to hold on to, with every ounce of our being.
We must not let people destroy those parts of our core.
This is different for every human.
But at the same time, there are things that we each share
And should strive for.

Love
Trust
Helping and respecting others
Compassion for life and our world
Understanding
Forgiveness

If we can strengthen our core
And try to understand the cores of others,
Our world will become a kinder, more tolerant place.
A place we can be proud to call home.

Back to the Barn

Looks like I'm finally going back to work tomorrow.
I've only got a week left. What a strange way to end a job.

For the past few days, the town where I live this summer has been evacuated.

I'm really freaking lucky.
Lucky that it was just a temporary home that I had to leave behind.
Lucky that I brought most of my stuff with me, even if I was missing a few annoying things like my clock.
I was lucky that I have a safe place to stay for this week and a half.
Plus lucky that the town wasn't hurt, and I don't think any people were hurt either.

A lot of people had to stay at an evacuation center several miles away.

I've gotta take more pictures of my horse when I get back up there.
I only have one of him. Sandy. He's my pretty boy. My blondie.
He's so polite. It's cute.
Although he gets scared of random stuff. Like the week before I left, he saw a leaf in the middle of the trail. A leaf. He sniffed at it and hopped straight up into the air (I had chosen that minute to stretch my legs, so they weren't in the stirrups. Yet I didn't have any trouble hanging on, which was a miracle XD ).
He also stomped on my foot the day before I came home.
It still hurts, and will hurt even more when I have to put on my cowboy boots again.



I'll get cuter pictures of him next week~

Ooh. I fell off the top of the haystack. It was seven bales high. I kid you not.
No one was around to witness it, but it must have been quite the scene for the horses and mules who were in the barn. I tumbled all the way down.

And I didn't get hurt (which was good, because that was the morning my foot got stomped. Crazy stuff happens all at once).

In Limbo

So, the fire situation has not really improved.
I had planned to come home during my days off this week, to see some of my family that's visiting from Italy.
I've been home for a couple days.

And when I got home, I saw that they took the horses out of the stable and down into the valley, because of the potential fire danger.
So, the stable is not open now. And they're not sure when it will be open again.
Amazingly, I'm here at home and I can stay here until they need me again. Which may be in a day, or maybe longer? I've already gotten one extra day off.
It's nice to be able to rest and let my foot recover. But it's a strange feeling, not knowing when I have to drive back to the park. Or what's happening over there.

Plus I left a lot of my stuff up in the park. Like my dental floss and most of my good pants.

So I've been hanging out with family, and doing some creative projects.

Fire Hazard

Man, a ranger just came by and told us to be ready to evacuate, just in case.
There's a fire a few miles up the road, and it wants to come this direction.
We have the trailers ready in case we need to get the horses out.

I think it's just a precaution (I hope). The fire department is hitting that thing hard.
But it's scary, considering we might have to flee in the dead of night. And we can see some of the glow from the fire.
We've been able to see the smoke since about 3:00 this afternoon.

We can't leave though, because we have to take care of the horses.

Don't come this way, fire.

Bits of Time

Heheh, most of my posts have been very short lately.

We have ten hour work days. But I usually manage to sneak in an hour or two for story stuff before I go to bed.
One of the other girls here likes to write too. We're going to swap a couple chapters. It's always fun to run into a new critique partner.
She's the new girl. She's been here just over a week. I'm glad she's here, because she's a nerd too (I gravitate to other nerds) XD None of the other stable people are nerds, so it's fun to talk to her about anime and stuff. There are a lot of them that we both love.

We watched Howl's Moving Castle tonight.
Freaking love that movie.

Loving Fake People

Sharing this video, because it talks about how people can get connected to fictional characters.

Bird Trio

I've been looking forward to catching the legendary birds in Pokémon Go.
So of course I'd be up in the mountains, away from civilization, for the entire legendary Pokémon event.

TT^TT

Joyful Tears

When a professional editor says your work is worthy to be published.
TT^TT