I’ll never forget that morning.
It was 5am and my Blackberry was already convulsing with messages screaming for attention. I laced up my Asics and headed out of my $49 motel room and into the darkness. It was February 2008 in Lakeland , Florida and it was cold.
And the rain was pouring.
But I needed to run.
I thought the sprint in the darkness would numb the leftover pain from the hostile meetings yesterday and the "food-fight" meets ahead of me today. On this morning, however, I was unable to outrun the demons that had been drafting me the past two years at this job. As my stride increased, so did the rain. I was drenched but didn't care. As I approached the busy intersection I should have slowed but my stride only increased. Despite the solid red “Do Not Walk” signal, I continued to run looking neither left nor right. Only straight. It’s not that I wished to die but simply cared less about living. It was only upon the return to my dingy motel room that I realized what I had done—or almost done. It was at that moment, in that motel room, that I decided I had to change course.
But inertia is a powerful force.
Whether it’s squirreling cash in a Vanguard IRA, losing 10 pounds of flab to fit the size 32 pants, raising grateful kids, or deciding to quit that unhealthy job, life seems to blow a strong and steady headwind to discourage us from making the course changes we need to make, to arrive at the ports in life we were meant to arrive.
Other times, however, fate forces our hand and provides a horse-pill sized dose of reality to force us to change course.
After my run in the rain that February morning, I visited my doctor to obtain a THIRD round of antibiotics after a double dose of walking pneumonia. On this visit however, my doctor’s prognosis included a word that left a tattoo on my memory: depression.
Reality check.
Big time.
It has been over four years since that morning run in the rain.
My decision to change course in my career is a “story in process” so to speak, with, what looks like a happily-ever-after ending.
After leaving the big salary, big headache corporate accounting job to take an executive recruiting gig--only to get laid off one year later as the economy flew into a hurricane-- left the nerves and family finances in near ruin.
But the sun came up again.
And the dividends of deciding to change course slowly emerged.
After graduating college over 20 years ago, I can proudly and LOUDLY say I love my job.
I am at port I was meant to arrive at.
As a faculty member in the Business Department for a community college in Denver, Colorado.
I would be a liar if I said that I don’t occasionally feel the urge to turn back to my former life of comfortable misery and snag the big paycheck.
But by the end of that second cup of Starbucks, I always remember that change requires courage. And am constantly reminded that the time off with the family that a teaching career provides is time I can NEVER buy back.
Ever.
I remember a question a friend of mine named Greg once asked: “ which life is fuller, maintaining a life of comfortable misery or pursuing a difficult and perhaps uncertain victory?”
Two weeks later, Greg quit his job in Denver and joined the Navy to become a chaplain in Iraq.
I say good luck Greg.
It was 5am and my Blackberry was already convulsing with messages screaming for attention. I laced up my Asics and headed out of my $49 motel room and into the darkness. It was February 2008 in Lakeland , Florida and it was cold.
And the rain was pouring.
But I needed to run.
I thought the sprint in the darkness would numb the leftover pain from the hostile meetings yesterday and the "food-fight" meets ahead of me today. On this morning, however, I was unable to outrun the demons that had been drafting me the past two years at this job. As my stride increased, so did the rain. I was drenched but didn't care. As I approached the busy intersection I should have slowed but my stride only increased. Despite the solid red “Do Not Walk” signal, I continued to run looking neither left nor right. Only straight. It’s not that I wished to die but simply cared less about living. It was only upon the return to my dingy motel room that I realized what I had done—or almost done. It was at that moment, in that motel room, that I decided I had to change course.
But inertia is a powerful force.
Whether it’s squirreling cash in a Vanguard IRA, losing 10 pounds of flab to fit the size 32 pants, raising grateful kids, or deciding to quit that unhealthy job, life seems to blow a strong and steady headwind to discourage us from making the course changes we need to make, to arrive at the ports in life we were meant to arrive.
Other times, however, fate forces our hand and provides a horse-pill sized dose of reality to force us to change course.
After my run in the rain that February morning, I visited my doctor to obtain a THIRD round of antibiotics after a double dose of walking pneumonia. On this visit however, my doctor’s prognosis included a word that left a tattoo on my memory: depression.
Reality check.
Big time.
It has been over four years since that morning run in the rain.
My decision to change course in my career is a “story in process” so to speak, with, what looks like a happily-ever-after ending.
After leaving the big salary, big headache corporate accounting job to take an executive recruiting gig--only to get laid off one year later as the economy flew into a hurricane-- left the nerves and family finances in near ruin.
But the sun came up again.
And the dividends of deciding to change course slowly emerged.
After graduating college over 20 years ago, I can proudly and LOUDLY say I love my job.
I am at port I was meant to arrive at.
As a faculty member in the Business Department for a community college in Denver, Colorado.
I would be a liar if I said that I don’t occasionally feel the urge to turn back to my former life of comfortable misery and snag the big paycheck.
But by the end of that second cup of Starbucks, I always remember that change requires courage. And am constantly reminded that the time off with the family that a teaching career provides is time I can NEVER buy back.
Ever.
I remember a question a friend of mine named Greg once asked: “ which life is fuller, maintaining a life of comfortable misery or pursuing a difficult and perhaps uncertain victory?”
Two weeks later, Greg quit his job in Denver and joined the Navy to become a chaplain in Iraq.
I say good luck Greg.
And thanks for helping me find the courage.
AMJ
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