Working with alpacas has been such a life altering, improving, crazy, fun, heart-wrenching, scary, amazing, stupendous, wonderful plus a ton more adjectives kind of experience. If someone had asked me 10 years ago I'd be living on a farm taking care of a 40+ alpaca herd, I would have told them they were crazy. Yet, here I am doing just that and loving each and every day including the really hard ones. I have one main goal I live by. If I am true to that goal, I don't need other goals because they will happen automatically. That goal and aspiration is to get to that moment right before I take my last breath on this earth and be able to look back and say to myself, I have lived without having regrets. That is my goal - to have as few regrets as I can when I reach the end of my life. That doesn't mean I live life safely. As matter of fact, it means the opposite. It means that when I am deciding on whether to go after something, whether it is a career, friendship, trip to someplace, buy something, etc, I will go through a decision process and ultimately the deciding factor is "will I regret doing or not doing this?" If the answer is I will regret not doing it, then I go for it and I go for it with the best of my abilities. If I succeed, that is awesome. If I "fail," I do my best to learn from it and know that I gave it my best shot and I am happy I gave it a try because I would have regretted not doing so. I rather fail at something knowing I tried than wondering about the "what if's." The ultimate motivation to building my farm was that fear that I would forever regret not trying. Because I took that risk and chance, no matter whether I make a financial success of this business or branch off into other work someday, no one can take away the last few years that have been one heck of a ride and have led me to believe that I can set the bar pretty high in going after my dreams. The limits are what we impose on ourselves.
It is ironic in some ways that coming to Oregon broke free a limitation I was living by. I had the safe career and was existing just fine but had no passion in any of it. I was just living each day but there was such a sense of emptiness. I knew something was missing but didn't know what. Then alpacas came into my life and that feeling of emptiness went away and was replaced with such a full heart and passion. Yet, being human, and loving routines and getting into ruts, I was back going through the motions of running the farm. The restlessness started to set in again because the activities I was working on to market my business were what was expected but not who I really am. They weren't those things that make my alpacas and my farm unique and fit my personality. And then I decided to finally finish this book that has been in the making and writing for years. Because of that, my passion for alpacas and my farm has been re-ignited and I'm even more in love with it than before. Thanks to writing the book, I was able to look back at what I so enjoyed doing and made me fall in love with this business in the first place. I haven't gone BACK to where I started, but moved FORWARD taking what I had started with. I sense such a huge change coming in my business and life and just as I wasn't sure what to expect when I arrived in Oregon, I'm not quite sure where this is all leading me. I suspect I will need to buckle my seat belt because it could be a real fun ride ahead. And that is ok, because I am not living with limits or regrets!
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| My wonderful Hum Sweet Hum Herd |
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