Embarking on a journey
“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” -attributed to Lao Tzu
I read this quote for the first time many years ago, and it’s been a mantra for me in my personal and my professional life. But in March of 2024, I made it a literal directive as I quit my job of 24 years to hike the Appalachian Trail.
There were many reasons for me to take this step, which I’ll get into more in depth in a future post. For now, I’ll focus on the motivation, determination, and execution of my time on the A.T., and how I see that connecting with taking the steps on the journey of starting my own business.
I had been interested in the A.T. since reading A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson around the year 2000. I was drawn to the idea of walking from Georgia to Maine, but I had recently graduated college and I had student loans to pay. My dream went dormant before I had a chance to feel regret, and I focused on the practical reality of making enough money to get by.
Twenty-one years later, I was well established in my career but feeling stuck. The pandemic had upended many aspects of life, and I was living alone and spending the majority of my day staring at a screen for work and grad school. The call to move, get outside of my experience, and do something different had previously been a whisper, but in 2021 it became a shout. I remembered my interest in the A.T. and decided I wanted to attempt a northbound thru-hike of the trail. I also decided that my time on the A.T. would be part of a 1-year break from work, an “adult gap year” and mid-career reset that I would use to lead me to what I wanted from the rest of my working life.
My motivation was to take care of myself and to have a rewarding and enriching experience. I spent some time considering taking a gap year to see if it felt like the right step to take, and while I could see challenges to making it happen, I couldn’t see any downsides to giving myself the gift of a year. At this point, the determination kicked in. I began to write out all the things I would need to consider for a year of not working, mainly expenses I could reduce or eliminate and how much money would be enough to live on for a year. I also began researching the A.T. and thru-hiking, getting most of my information from podcasts, books, and classes at REI. I started training and went on a few short backpacking trips to test out my newly purchased gear. All of these were practical, small steps on my way to the bigger goal of taking a year off from work and hiking the A.T.
Now we come to the execution of my hike, specifically the moment I took that first step on the A.T. in March of 2024. I felt excited, nervous, and as well prepared as someone can be when they’re about to do something they’ve never done before. Each day that I hiked, I took many steps and encountered situations both foreseen and unforeseen. I kept thinking to myself, “You get where you’re going one step at a time.” Thinking of the many-mile journey as a series of small steps is what enabled me to make it as far as I did on the trail. There were also moments of peace and contentment, of getting to enjoy so much time in nature, that balanced out the days that felt physically and mentally challenging.
There’s a lot of time to think when you spend 10-12 hours a day hiking. I thought a lot about what I wanted from my life after the trail, specifically what I wanted my work life to look like. I realized I wanted to be able to focus on the aspects of my previous job that I had found most fulfilling: helping medical educators assess and educate their students, helping people to have difficult conversations around feedback, and indulging my love of the written word to write and edit content for others. I wondered if I could start my own business offering these services. I had considered this prior to hiking the A.T., but taking the step into the unknown of the trail made me realize I could take such a step in my work life as well. If it worked out, great; if not, I’d learn something from the experience that I could take into my next job or career path.
I’m still in the early steps of the journey of having my own business. I’ve got as many things on my to-do list as I did when planning my gap year, possibly more. Registering as an LLC, connecting with known and new potential clients, refining my existing workshops and creating new ones, and starting this website and blog are just a few of the things I’ve been focusing on in the past few weeks. As with the A.T., I realize that there’s a lot I’ve learned that I can use in this endeavor, and there’s also a lot that I don’t yet know or can’t predict that I’ll encounter. What I do know is that I have the motivation, curiosity, and determination to do good work and learn from the experience. I’m excited to see where this journey will lead me, and I hope you’ll follow along and be part of it!