The Secret Life of McKenna: Keep calm & slump on

August 28, 2013Leslie WylieUncategorized#MCKENNA'S BLOGLeave a comment

After a long period of silence because writing about her life just seemed too friggin’ depressing, junior blogger McKenna Oxenden returns to her regularly scheduled programming.

From McKenna:

Wow, long time no talk! I’ve been a very bad blogger over the past couple of months–but as you’ll read it’s basically because my life has been a living hell… and before that, it was working student life, but let’s just say, surgery, eh, they didn’t find much in my 60-year-old active woman shoulder and I also happened to find out that Gigi has OCDs in BOTH stifles right before a pre-purchase exam… as I said, living hell. Anyway, I’m really sorry about it but you can for sure expect regular posts again!!

If you’ve been on the Chronicle of the Horse website recently, you may have seen a link to Megan Kepferle’s latest article. (If you haven’t, check it out here… after finishing my post of course!) She focuses in on being in a slump. Welcome to my world, Horse Nation.

The past few months of my life have been pretty slump-ish. The kind of slump where things got bad and just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, it did– time after time after time. Yeah, that slump.

It’s pretty safe to say my life sucks. I’m crippled, my horse is broken, school is starting, there are college applications to deal with along with the long lasting effects of my concussion–did I mention I’m broken and can’t ride? Or play volleyball my senior year of high school? Alas, each of those have their own stories, which in due time shall be told.

Just as any person does, I kind of had to take a step back and just focus on myself. Take some time for myself to process the information, reflect, and do my best to try and push on.

Writing normally helps me, but with these situations it seemed to make it worse. Every time I found myself sitting down to work on a blog post, a pile of frustration and emotions would smack me across the face and force me to walk away. And when writing is your usual escape/therapy session, it’s just a little frustrating when even that fails.

But here I am. Arms wide open, screaming and yelling, “Come at me world. Bring it. I dare you to screw me over one more time.” Slowly but surely, I’m trying to pull myself back up to standing loud and proud. I’ll be happy to have Horse Nation with me every step of the way. One by one, story by story, we’ll look back on the past, and edge toward the future.

That’s the way I feel too, Gigi.

“Keep calm and slump on”? I guess more of “Keep calm and push on” would be better, eh?

Welcome back to the secret life of McKenna.

McKenna Oxenden is a 16-year-old junior in high school, hailing from Columbia, MD. McKenna is a training level event rider and is currently campaigning the 15.1 Trakhener Cross, “Gossip Girl” a.k.a. Gigi and previously competed 13.2 pony superstar, Dorito Cooler Ranch, through training level. She has worked for CCI4* event rider, Emily Beshear and currently trains with Courtney Sendak of Defying Gravity Eventing. She is also an active ambassador to JustWorld International. When McKenna isn’t busy writing or riding, she is taking photographs and playing in Photoshop. You can see some of her work by liking her Facebook page (Mckenna Erinn Photography).