Tell me, how do you explain to someone, no not even just a someone maybe a potential employer that you have spent the entirety of the last six years chasing the summer season, jumping from plane to plane following not only the sun but a professional sportsman and his horde of polo ponies? What skills will they assume you possess when you go into detail about the polo players yard you manage twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week? Will they think you are just another pony patter on her high horse? More than likely. Will they be impressed that I have managed to study abroad and via correspondence this whole time?
This is the constant train of thought running through my head as I prepare to leave the polo world and go into the “real world” and the “real workforce”. Why am I leaving? I know its cliché, but to find myself of course. I thought I was doing that the past six years, but I have recently found that I was running in circles, chasing life experiences and growing in every way but upwards. I have decided that it is time for a change, which means I’m slowly going into decline about leaving behind the life, friends and newfound family I have made for myself in this tiny polo bubble.
Life as a polo groom is ridiculously hard to explain to anyone not involved in the sport; you become part of a world where it is completely normal to work twelve hour days, go out partying until three am and go back to work at five am. It’s normal to spend every night out of the house, going to dinner or drinks or even the movies with a group of friends that have basically become family; they’ve seen you in every state imaginable and you them. You become so involved with so many different people, from so many different walks of life that it becomes a shock when you suddenly go back to the world you knew before polo.
This is what is scaring me, leaving behind a world that I have become so apart of. Over six years and twelve seasons I have molded myself to fit this society, so how am I meant to fit into another. I know what you must be thinking, why leave? I have made a life for myself and I’ve just explained a side of it that I absolutely adore, I love my friends, I love my social life and I love the job so why on earth would you leave that behind?
Because take this life and add studying… I have been doing a Bachelor of Communications for the past two years, whilst doing all the above. Finding time to work, socialize and study is not as easy as one would think. As well as this, I need to grow.
I slowly figured out that my job has a ceiling and I have hit that ceiling; I am at the highest point I can be at while grooming within polo. I want to break barriers and I want to continue to challenge myself, I want to become that person that never stops going after what she wants. I have become comfortable in this job; and who wouldn’t when you’re competing with the best and coming out on top, I’ve relished becoming a known face within the polo community and you cannot begin to imagine how much I have valued working for one of England’s best. Yet, not being able to reach a higher point really didn’t sit well with me, it may have been rash and rushed, but I do believe I have made the right decision to move away from this life.
So, with that I have decided to go home to Australia and continue my studies there. I will still study from a distance as I want the freedom to pick up and leave when the travel bug bites (which I daresay will be quite often). I will be doing my degree full time, hoping to get it finished as quickly as possible. If I do, who knows I may re-enter the polo world within the field of journalism, try and merge my two great passions into one great career.
So here goes nothing….
