"Because it's there ..."

"I have no inspiration," I said. "It's simply gone. What was once a deep well of hope and possibility is now is a dry and dusty hole in my heart. I look ahead and don't see exciting changes. I just see the same hum-drum march into perpetuity."

"Why? You have great things ahead!" Sam exclaimed.

"If I had something that lit me up ... Something, anything, then I could take my mind off of my problems, focus, and find some inspiration ... Instead, I just don't care. I do what I need to do to get through my day and then I come home and, if I'm feeling really really really motivated, I go for a run. And maybe blog."

And then, tired of hearing the same sad complaints for weeks on end, "look," she said, with edgy resolve, "I hate to be a jerk but its not that easy, on any front. Even when I was miserable because of my job situation I wasn't all the time, actively being motivated by my academic interests. They didn't carry me through every day. And when you start studying again after a long while of not having done so, it sucks. No matter who you are and how much you thought you liked school. It is not easy. At some point I just had to make a decision to give myself more options, even if it meant making really tough decisions that didn't feel right at the time, or sacrificing a life that was mostly great."

"You can do this. Pull yourself up. Find a way ..."

And so I have decided to study for, take, and conquer the Graduate Management Admission Test or, as past, present, and future business school students know it, the GMAT.

I do need more options and, honestly, I need to crawl out of this mire ... this bog of hopelessness and despair that I've allowed to slowly pool around my ankles.

Truthfully, I'm not ever sure I want an MBA. So why spend countless hours and hundreds of dollars taking a test that I'm not even sure I'll need?

Well, for one, I'm not sure I WON'T need it either. But, beyond that, I felt, when I first opened my study guides a few weeks ago, like this trek might rekindle a fight in me that's long stood dormant. The great mountaineer George Leigh Mallory once said that he wanted to climb Mount Everest, "because it's there." I too want to climb this Everest for the same reason. I accepted this challenge knowing full well that I stand in jeopardy of losing time, money, and (quite honestly) pride. No matter- now, just a few weeks into my quest, I can already feel desire and drive stir within me. This challenge has brought about good, well overdue change. As overdramatic as it may sound, I feel a little more alive and a little more couragous.

Of course, simply climbing to the top of this GMAT mountain isn't enough. Mallory himself is believed to have died just after he reached the summet of Everest. Years later his son, John Mallory, coolly noted that, "the only way you achieve a summit is to come back alive. The job is half done if you don't get down again."

That, then, will be the function of this sub-blog. I'm going to use it to find my way up the mountain (by keeping myself honest, by reporting my progress, and by sharing what I learn) and to find my way back down (by remembering what I'm really out to climb.)

Wish me luck, friends. My journey of a thousand miles is only in its first steps and already I feel the odd combination of weighty expectation and feather-light hope. Now, to find my inspiration ...