Rodeos happen two times a year in our area. The annual Heath Springs rodeo, which was yesterday and the pageland watermelon festival rodeo, which happens in the summer. Today was harder to shoot. I found out later on tonight that they hold slack events during the day, which is a way for all 120 competitors to compete in the rodeo, but they save the best for the night shows. Which is one thing that I don’t understand, why have this event at night? It’s hard as heck to shoot, the flash startles ever horse there, so let’s have it during the day! Thank God for feature hunting.

This high school rodeo isn’t all about skoal and yee-haw’s! all night long, these group of kids are more like a family than anything else. During the week, they’re just like normal high school students but on the weekend, they travel across the state to different rodeos that are sometimes two days long. It’s fun and most of them enjoy, from what they told me. There are also a lot of emotions involved in the rodeo, the kids take their work very seriously, some too seriously, but that is to be expected at a young age.
Before I left, I saw a group of cowboys and girls gathered together doing a devotional and scripture reading. The guy in charge was talking about how one of the certain things in life is death, which got me thinking about it. Not dying, but occupying my life until that unpleasant moment happens. One thing that I think most people do is take things for granted until they’ve lost it, only then to realize that they needed it more than they could ever realize. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the difference between self-preservation and self-centernedness. I admit, often, I get these two confused. I want to help others, and i try real hard, but neglect own self, then when I help myself, I feel self-centered. weird right? I thought so.