get the lead out - part IV

There’s a Harvard Business professor named Mark Albion. He uses the term being on "the treadmill," to describe the things we do in our lives for no other reason than to keep our lifestyle going. A job, an income level. If either slowed, you’d fall off the treadmill. He’s now a proponent of value-based businesses, which you can begin to read about here if you’re interested.
So there are things I had to accept about my life. I couldn't just blame circumstances for putting stones in my road. I’ve gotten so used to the treadmill that I've grown lazy. I've sacrificed an enriching life for the safety that comes with doing just enough to get by.
How do you get out of this position? Well, if you’re fortunate, you go back to work and rededicate yourself. If you’ve taken on so much responsibility that you can’t contribute in a real way to anything, you simplify. If you’ve been slacking, you take on enough responsibility to engage your mind. You make a commitment to your investment.
Unfortunately (fortunately?) that’s not my story. I know because I tried it. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t just making sour grapes. I took years to make sure. And that’s where I stalled out, because once I accepted it, the problem shifted, to knowing what to do with the rest of my life. Again, I count myself lucky, because I had friends who helped me imagine a way out of this place. They helped me imagine a new life. And doing that is the first step in changing it.
My interest in birdwatching started out innocently. I bought a digital camera, and one of the skills I tried to develop was taking action shots of birds. I can’t say my skills have improved all that much, but with the purchase of a few feeders, I got better at attracting them. That is how I got hooked, and that went into the think tank.
It was around that time, while reading some news articles on the npr website, than I saw a web ad for a franchise devoted to birdwatching. I never knew such a thing existed. So I started researching, and that went into the think tank as well.
I don’t remember every ingredient which fed my current obsession. But I remember the day my idea came to me. I vividly remember sitting on the patio of a Starbucks establishment with two friends as I explained my idea. I was yammering like the town idiot, but it was because something I had agonized for had suddenly materialized in front of me. As I explained it to them, it was as if a mountain had dropped out of the air and landed in an open field in front of me. It was fully formed, it was tremendous and solid and all I had to do was climb it.
The more I explained it, the crazier my friends thought I was. They blamed the caffeine in the coffee. But I had just received a mountain in my front yard, and they were with me the day I sat back on my heels and marveled over the journey which had opened up in front of me, something so engrossing that exhausting all its potential could occupy the rest of my life.

--Laura