Sunday, September 13, 2009

Life Interferes With Art

I know most folks think life imitates art, but right now, life is getting in the way of art! While Fizzy breezed and easy four furlongs at Remington prepping for his next start, I am completely and utterly neglecting the writing part of the program! As many of you know from tracking all my syntax and grammatical errors over the years, this is far from a professional endeavor, but it is a lot of fun and I do attempt to keep it as professional as possible. That includes the ability to post relatively frequently on a variety of topics related to being a small time owner.

Here is one of them.

Most of us small timers have another vocation to pay the bills until we get that one big horse or the groups start pulling together with frequency and consistency. That world has really crimped my racing style lately. Nothing completely out of the norm, just an awful lot of it between game trend analysis, personnel issues, new casino openings and a wide array of other obligations that all appear to be rearing their ugly heads at the same time. Normally that doesn't creep into my after hours life, but as any of you that work for The Man know, at times that just happens. It just so happens that this is my time.

If I combine the hours after 5 PM that my 'real' job takes up these days along with the unanticipated hours it takes to fill a half hour of Blog Talk Radio, my writing time has diminished completely. I think of an idea, jot a few notes and then realize that I am much too tired to try and form a sentence, never mind string together some thoughts. The Blog also takes a back seat to the obligations of the partnerships: financial statements to keep up with, trainers to stay in touch with, new groups to flesh out and try and fill, etc.

So really, what this ends up being is a long winded apology of sorts. I know that both the quantity and, sadly, the quality, of this blog has slipped in the last few weeks. I apologize for that and I do promise that it will get better as there does appear to be light on the horizon. Let's just hope it's not an oncoming train!

Thanks for reading and bearing with me!

1 comment:

Jack said...

Hi Ted,

I appreciate the time you are able to dedicate to the blog as even if you have the time it’s tough to come up with new material that may be of interest to others.

Future radio topic suggestion: Our group is bumping up against an issue that I’d be interested in other’s take on.

As you know we are a group of 20 owners all with 5% stake and instead of having an MP whose ownership contribution is managing the group we elected one of the 5% owners as the MP so the trainer would have a single point of contact. The original plan was the MP would have the final say in horse related activities but we’ve run into the situation where these decisions have gone against what the other “active participation” owners would like to do.

There are about 5 of us who do all the work for the group from horse research to running the books but what has started to transpire is the elected MP has at times made decision that are not supported by most of the group as it’s what he deems is the best choice.

Wondering if there’s a working model utilizing an executive committee model for most decisions while still having a single point of contact as to not overwhelm the trainer with calls/email.

I know you don’t want to get into calling out partnerships and neither do I as for the most part it’s been a very good year for us but I’m interested in how others manage their partnerships to keep most partners happy with the daily decisions.

Jack