The sound of cogs and spindles

How do you get better at something? In my experience the first thing is that you have to want to get better at it. That's the driving force that will get you doing everything else. On top of that you must build practice, as much as possible, and tuition from the best teachers you can find. Really, that's it. There are no short cuts and no tricks that will make you suddenly get better without putting in the hours in, if you want to get better at something you just have to work at it with experienced guidance to help you back on the right track when you start to stray.

I do, however, think there may be one thing you can do to get more mileage out of your learning and that is to immerse yourself entirely in the thing you do so that it becomes your absolute focus. If you can do that in a way that combines practice and teaching then you have a situation where you're putting in so many hours that you possibly benefit a little more from the time you put in. It is with this in mind that back in September I put down a deposit to go and spend February in Texas, as a student at Martin Black's Horsemanship School. It's expensive, logistically tricky and it will break my heart to be away from sleepsy_mouse and my grumpy black horse for the whole month, but it is an opportunity that I don't expect to have again and a whole month of intensive learning with one of the top trainers in the tradition of the Dorrances and Ray Hunt is something that I believe will progress my horsemanship significantly. I guess come March we'll know.

So the next few weeks will be quite frenetic as we prepare to move house, I prepare myself as best as I can for the course and we do all the stuff that we do in our normal lives the rest of the time. It's exciting, it's going to change things a whole lot for me, and it's a little bit nervewracking. It will be my 33rd birthday while I'm out there, so I guess this is kind of a outrageously self-indulgent birthday present to myself. I really hope it proves to be a good one.