I had a pretty productive day today. In the morning, I met up with S and S at the ranch. We went out for a trail ride, and I reunited with Master for the first time in months. I’d forgotten how tall that horse is: it was a real struggle getting the saddle that high up above my shoulders. And then he was giving me a real tough time putting the bit into his mouth. Once we got on the trails, he was good, albeit a bit slower than Chip. Anyway, the highlight really was that this was my first time having a meeting, like a real business meeting, while riding horseback. Fucking awesome!! Really different without my laptop and notes: in fact, I was kinda worried about getting all my thoughts out and remembering what we discussed afterwards, but shit, the experience was pretty damn cool. We had a great meeting: there’s lots to do. After we got back to the office, S told me the target areas he was interested in having me work on, and I’m thinking I’d love to give this a go until the end of the year. The work arrangement is very flexible: work from home, on my own; we’ll meet every Thursday as we did today, and then I’ll get commissions with a cut that I think is reasonable. So still a lot of details are up in the air, but I’m willing to just give it a whirl to see where this all leads. Super stoked.

In the afternoon, a guy from the city came over to the house to conduct a water audit. Yeah, our water bills have looked way excessive to me and not surprisingly, the primary culprit is our beautiful, lush, green lawn. The city has a program where owners can get landscape rebates for converting their lawns to low water yards. Interestingly enough, the guy said we are doing surprisingly well given how nice our yard looks. So that was comforting, but still. We are going to keep the lawn in the backyard for the pups, but I’m thinking that the front lawn will have to go. Even if by local standards, 200+ gallons per day is good, that volume still blows my mind. So yes, I’ll be playing my “how low can you go” game with that. Haha.

In the evening, I attended a Bay Area Girl Geek networking event at Cisco. The panel of speakers were so inspiring. One common theme: complacency stifles growth. The women talked about doing new things, taking on challenging projects even in the face of fear. Their words really resonated with me, and it got me thinking that this ranch opportunity really is a chance to live the unconventional life I’ve been dreaming about. It IS scary, and a part of me thinks that I’ll still need to return to a standard 9-5 job where the pay and everything else is stable and structured and predictable, but maybe this is where the risk-taking needs to come into play. The other partner at the ranch also runs an events/catering business. As the women at Cisco said yesterday, “you have to see it to believe it and then do it.” What does it mean to run a business (a non-enterprise software business)? I am anxious about the uncertainty and newness, but I am also so curious. Someone last night defined risk-taking as: knowing your comfort zone, feeling curious about something outside of that, feeling fear, and then going forward anyway to pursue that curiosity. That’s where my mind is going now…