I wrote this like 18months ago and forgot about it. Since then I think I've found better balance in my life and I also have a different job along the same lines, and also I fixed the plumbing. But I'll publish it in its original state.
I think one of my greatest strengths is my ability to rise to a challenge.
I have a really cool day job. I am part of a small team who look after the databases for my countries biggest ecocommerce website. We spend a lot of time trying to apply best practices in our context - lazy experimenting, quiet tinkering, making databases faster, cheaper, more secure, more reliable and easier to recover after a disaster. Slow, steady iterative progress. But - when a problem occurs on our website, truckloads of dollars get lost per minute and it makes national news. I have an app on my phone which goes off like a siren and I'm jolted into action. I'll have 3 screens open paging between graphs, error streams and documentation, 20 people talking in my ear, scribbling down hypothesises and ruling them out, taking decisive action based on experience - on knowledge - on a hunch. I find the adrenaline and pressure energizing... and I'm very, very good at what I do.
I'm the same when I have a problem with horses. I once had a horse split her hoof open top to bottom in an accident. Blood and pus pissing out the coronet band, totally unable to bear weight on that leg. The vet said she didnt know how it could be fixed. I would need an incredible rehabilitative farrier - in a time and place where local people were struggling to get the most average Jo Blogg with a hammer to come out every 8 weeks. I was jumpstarted into researching, reading, testing, experimenting etc. Padded boots, then within 24hours I had the horse in a a closed heel cast and DIM. I created and meticulously followed an elaborate 11 step process to treat the wound, the pain, stabilize the remaining hoof capsule. I addressed infection, imbalance, nutrition, upper body compensation and emotional health. Within 3 months the horse was trotting sound, and the entire hoof capsule grew back correctly within the next 6 months. I did it all alone with nearly no prior experience.
I was the same with Sashas back - I went from never considering the inside of a horse to studying anatomy, attending dissections, learning rehab work, classical inhand work, bodywork etc. I would spend hours a day with her, then hours a day studying. There was nothing balanced or measured or patient about it - I escalated to adrenaline and ran on it for hours, days, years.
My cousin had a beatup RX8 sports car. It was electrifying to drive. It acceralated like a rocket, and spun on a dime. It was LOUD. Roaring through the back streets of industrial districts in the wee hours of the morning the outside world whipped away into a single streaming dark tunnel. But the she had a dodgy clutch, and you had to redline the revs in order to shift gear. We revved and spun and burnt that car straight into the ground.
Sometimes I feel like that car. My threshold for what counts as a problem keeps rising, as does the amount of adrenaline required to motivate me to take decisive action. I once went nearly a whole year without hot water in my kitchen - despite having both the skills to replumb it myself and the money to pay someone else to fix it. It just didn't seem like an emergency, and then I got used to it, and then I forgot to care
I think one of my greatest weaknesses is my ability to rise to (only) a challenge