Part Two Is It Wise To Jump

With Eyes Closed?

It may not be wise to jump with eyes closed - however, that is what I did when I started my business. No funding. No reserve. No experience in business beyond front line retail and some years in nonprofit education and recruitment. I saw where I wanted to go. It scared me. So I functionally closed my eyes to the nay-sayers (myself included) and the obvious risks and carried forward. Or, leaped.

It is categorically not wise to jump anywhere without full sight. However, if it’s a choice between being paralyzed and doing nothing or leaping with my eyes closed…I hope I always choose the leap. (Cue music written by Mark D. Sanders and Tia Siller…”And when you get the choice to sit it out, or dance: I hope you dance.”)

And here comes what is generally known as a digression.

I relocated my business. My business at the pinnacle of its life. I didn’t know, at the time, it was at its pinnacle. The internet was still a mystery to most business people. In 1998 I’d paid over 10,000 to have a company design a web site for me. I knew the internet would change the way I did business - I just had no idea how the internet would change my business itself, at is core. And ultimately, the world wide web has rendered those original, hand made greetings that were distributed around the world, practically obsolete. But I digress from my digression!

I left behind a few decades of community building, a few life-altering sadnesses and moved halfway across my home state. There, in a region I was only coming to know, I was driving to orient myself to the area. On a long stretch of highway passing field after field of growing things, a song came on the radio. The lyrics pierced my poet’s soul from the first lines, “May you never lose your sense of wonder.” A breath of lyrical fresh air. A song that didn’t bust out with a broken heart. And it just went on, “Get your fill to eat but always keep your hunger.” By the time Lee Ann Womack and the Sons of the Desert got to the chorus the first time I was crying so hard, I had to pull my car over.

There it was. This was the musical narrative of what it was for me, again, to leap with my eyes closed.

When did I start leaping with my eyes open? I’ll spend some time with that tomorrow.