"Wait a second, let me catch my breath
Remind me how it feels to hear your voice
Your lips are movin', I can't hear a thing
Livin' life as if we had a choice..."
-- Sing Me To Sleep, by Alan Walker
Oh hi. The last time I wrote a journal was three months ago. Oops. Here's my update.
For the possibly two people who actually will read this. Go you. You're amazing.
Also. Apologizing in advance because I'm currently overly tired, fueled by caffeine, procrastinating on homework, slightly sick, and a little emotionally unstable so this may be a mess.
Let's start with [community] college.
I love it. I tell everyone that it's like a more relaxed version of high school. I love driving myself in, having time in between and after classes to get stuff done, having more freedom, and feeling more in control. I'm taking 5 classes. Stats, Intro to Communications, Critical Thinking, Sociology, and Diversity. My favorite class is Critical Thinking. The teacher is really awesome and the class is really laid back and easy. Plus, the content itself is actually interesting. My least favorite is either Sociology or Diversity. Sociology is a subject I am actually interested in. I took sociology in high school but had an awful teacher. The same thing has happened in college. The teacher, Becky, is super nice and I like her as a person... but the way she runs her class doesn't work for me. She says she's not gonna lecture for more than a few minutes a day but then she ends up taking up the entire ninety minutes with lecture. And it's boring, unrelated, weird crap that I can't follow and don't get anything out of. The only good parts about the class is my friend sitting next to me and the tests. We just screw around and write notes and I doodle and zone Becky out. And for the tests, they're online and taken at home so... no studying needed (sorry not sorry.) Diversity is okay I guess. The teacher is a nice guy. The class isn't insanely hard. However, what bothers me is this giant group project we're working on right now that my group is procrastinating on and causing me stress, as well as the fact that he doesn't have any tests until the huge cumulative final. How the hell do you study for a cumulative final when you haven't tested on any of the material before? Not a fan.
But like I said. I generally really like the school. I'm not looking forward to next semester though, I'll have a couple harder classes I think, especially Human Bio. Completely dreading that class. But even more than that, I'm not looking forward to next year when I transfer to the university. I know I won't like it there nearly as much as the community college. Huge classes, lots of people... no thanks.
So I guess the other thing that keeps me busy is work. All-in-all, not going too badly. However.
I quit at the horse barn I was working at. Straight up quit. Said I wasn't going in the next day and that was that. Here's the deal with that place. I didn't feel appreciated. I felt like I was constantly being attacked and my work was being picked apart and I could never do anything right. Also, originally I just wanted to do every other weekend. However, one of the weekends required that you do a Tuesday evening shift. I knew that, but I didn't want it. I kind of assumed that the other girl who was hired to do the opposite weekend as me could/would do it. However, she told the owner she couldn't, so the owner came to me and kind of cornered me into it. She was like "So you can open up your Tuesdays for the evening shift, right?" When I told her I would prefer not to, she was kind of snotty and said "Well the other girl can't do it so you have to." That night, I ended up messaging the owner and telling her that I didn't want to do the Tuesdays because it would be too much for me. What ended up happening is the owner (I'm trying not to say names here, heh) made a group chat with me and the other girl, said we needed to work something out otherwise she'd have to choose between us. Me and the other girl decided we would share the Tuesday shift and do it together so the chores would take less time and we didn't have to do it all alone. I should have just quit then. But I decided to stick with it. But like I said, it was constant nit-picking. For our Tuesday shift, me and the other girl would triple check everything, try to make sure we didn't miss anything or forget anything, but every damn time we would get a message saying the stuff we missed or didn't do right. I understand we need to learn to get things right, but it felt very accusatory and never like "Oh, your stalls looked amazing but just please remember to do this..." No. It was "You guys need to remember to pull Ron and Mo's feed pans. It seems like you forget every time." Like, excuse me? I was never explicitly told to pull their pans. Maybe it should have clicked with me that you pull the outside horse's pans so you should pull the inside ones too, but it didn't. And if we missed it three weeks in a row, why didn't you tell us sooner? So just crap like that. It felt very negative and I wasn't ever happy or comfortable there. So I decided to tell the owner a month in advance, that I would be leaving. A month. Far as I am concerned, I only needed to give her two weeks, but I decided to give her a month so she could hire someone to replace me on my weekend and Tuesday shifts. Problem was, when I was hired, I verbally agreed to committing to six months. However, I never signed anything. I probably never even said out loud that I would stay that long. I didn't forget about that fact. But my own mental health and comfort is more important to me than making myself miserable staying somewhere I don't want to be. Apparently not to the owner. I got told I would need to repay my training pay. There was no understanding that I was doing this because I needed to. There was just bitterness and sass about how I said I would stay for six months and if I didn't do that then I would need to repay the training pay. This was all through messaging on Saturday night after I'd done my morning shift. I was supposed to go back on Sunday morning, but I was afraid the owner would be pissy at me and treat me poorly. So I just quit. I said I wasn't coming back the next day. The owner got pissy, said some bitchy things ("I thought you were better than that but I guess my judgement was wrong"), and I never said a word more. I lost out on a month of pay, because I didn't get my September check from her (she pays monthly.) And I'm sure I'll never see it. So overall... that was a really crappy situation and it was handled poorly but I'm glad I'm done there and can focus on school and shopko and other things.
Even though this journal is already wayy too long, I'm gonna write about the ranch in here too. Because I got to visit there again a couple weeks ago.
I brought my friend with me. This was kind of a big deal for me, because I don't like inviting friends out there. I don't know why, but I've only done it a couple times over the six years I've been there. Now that Melissa has moved, it was even stranger for me, because I don't feel as comfortable there and I feel like an outsider half the time. But. He really wanted to come with and ride a horse, so alas, we went to Hinckley and rode horses. And it was awesome. I put my friend on Little Joe, our big faithful lesson horse, and I rode, of course, Dream. I missed her so much. We were in the barn and we had Dream and Joe tied to the stalls so we could groom and tack up, and every time I went out of sight and wasn't right next to her, Dream would start shifting around and whinnying and looking for me. As soon as I came back, she calmed down and stood quietly. I taught my friend how to groom, tack up, put a bridle on, lunge, and of course ride. For some reason, I really like sharing my horse knowledge with people, sometimes. Sometimes I get really uptight and spazzy, but not this time. We rode in the indoor for the most part, mostly so my friend could get the hang of steering and get a little more comfortable with Joe. I forget sometimes that I used to be like that too. Now it comes so natural to me, even though I know I have SO MUCH more to learn and I'm not even that good of a rider. Dream was really good that day though. I walked/trotted her in the indoor, working a little on collection and slowing down that damn bouncy trot of hers. I also loped her both ways, which is stupid of me because she just lifts her head and runs around and doesn't listen, but... I love the feel of her lope and I didn't wanna go without it. So we did, even though it accomplished nothing. Then we went and rode bareback in the yard outside. Dream behaved better than Joe did. Or maybe it was more the fact that I know how to handle my horse a little better than my newbie friend on Joe, who likes to get away with things sometimes. Joe walked into one of the sheds with my friend riding him. He also started trotting towards the barn and took my friend off guard, so he just kind of.. slid right off. I'm sorry, but it was so hilarious. I felt kinda bad, but I couldn't stop laughing. But walking around bareback with Dream is my favorite. Just relaxing. It was a really good day. That was really messily explained, but oh well. I miss my Dreamer again.
So I would believe that's the main points of life in general right now. I should probably go get some stuff done before I go into work later. Yay shopko. Yay school. Is it winter break yet?