Mentally Tired
Each year in March I feel so excited about the year to come, female Boas and Pythons are becoming gravid, colubrids are coming out of hibernation and are ready to breed. Breeding and hatching snakes is what I love, and each year the potential seems so exciting. What comes over the next seven months is something that I am never truly prepared for. It’s a cycle that I have been dealing with for over twenty years. After a long winter and plenty of time to get my head back together from the previous year, I am full of energy, full of ideas, and full of anticipation for things to come. I can hardly wait for the busy hatch season, and all the travel that goes along with it. Moving through April, May, June and July seems incredible. Eggs are being laid, babies are hatching. You’re riding the wave of adrenaline. Sure the days are super long, and the pressure to do everything is immense, but this is what I have been dreaming of since I was a kid.
The travel starts in July, and picks up from there. But it’s not just the travel, it’s the pressure that comes with it. All the obligations like, talks, filming, P.R. for the hobby, but again, I love it.. It’s what drives me. Don’t forget all the emails keep coming, the phone never stops, 100 text messages a day, you have to keep trying to care for you clients as if you are not pulling your hair out, which you are. I have to keep reminding myself that each email, call, text has to be as important as the last.
I’m a pretty high energy guy and for several months can keep chugging away, doing my best to handle the responsibility that I have created for myself. But each year about the middle of October I hit a wall. I wake up and feel I have nothing left to give, like I just need a break. Unfortunately that break is still a month or more away, the emails keep coming, the shipments still need to go out, I have to somehow keep going even if every ounce of my energy is telling me to shut down.
Am I complaining? Do I want you to feel bad for me? Of course not, then truth is I love my life and what I have been able to turn it into. I am living the dream, even if it feels like a nightmare this time of the year. I want to except and embrace the roll that everyone has helped me create. I want to be one of the front guys for the hobby I love so dearly. I never want to let you guys down….The fact still remains, that just a short few months from now I will forget this burned out feeling I have at the moment and will be craving for this time of the year to get here again. This is what I do, it’s what I always wanted to do with my life. It might seem like the light at the end of the tunnel is a “long” way off, but in the end I wouldn’t be happy any other way. For now, I’ll try to keep my chin up and keep moving forward. Like with anything, there is a price to pay to live out your dreams….
