Thought I'd take a few minutes...

To tell you my plans for the future, however screwed up they may be.

When I was younger, I initially had the thought that my future was going to be something with animals. Maybe I'd be a vet... until I realized that hey, I'd have to cut animals open or put them to sleep, and I couldn't stomach that. Then I thought I'd be a horse breeder, till I thought about all the horses without home. Then, a trainer, but then again, few enough people have a need for a trainer at all, and then, there's tons of trainers out there. Next, I decided I would become an Illustrator or a Graphic Designer to go along with my art. So what am I doing, but sitting here in my final year of college to be a designer.

For a while near the end of my first year, I kept thinking, "What am I doing here?" and "Why didn't I go to school for horses?" Well, had I known before I went to college what I ultimately wanted to do, I probably would have tried to do just that. But, what was started was started and so I might as well finish, eh?

So anyways, here's my plan.

First and foremost, after I get out of here, I'm thinking I'll take a job at a design company and freelance on the side. I'll have to save a lot of money to do what I want, but I think I can manage. My friend Jacy and I have talked about saving our money together for ten years or so after college (though she has two more years than I) and then starting up a stable. This stable will be for boarding horses, but not solely. We will also be working a rescue.

Running a rescue is going to be a lot of work, and I know it's going to be a very emotional ride, but who better to carry those emotions than I?

I also want to adopt a few (see that? A few? Is that like... three? four? Who knows, with me...) mustangs from the BLM. A lot of people say it's cruel that they round them up and auction them off, but I think that it's necessary and that it is also a kindness. Mustangs have few natural predators, and if they become over-populated, who's to say how many we save from starvation and early deaths by rounding them up and auctioning a few off? I mean, I wouldn't want them to round up -all- the horses, only enough to prevent such starvation.

I certainly think places like Crystal Peaks Youth Ranch have the right of it. They rescue, buy, and adopt horses of all shapes, sizes, and histories, and the horses in turn help them 'rescue' children with similar pasts. A horse that was beaten makes a friend of a child that was beaten, or perhaps a woman who was abused. It's all very nice. I mean, it's not nice what happened to them, but nice that they get such second chances.