No, this post was not hacked. I’m just growing up.

I find myself grinning from ear to ear inside, so no one knows. All they see is this poker face I display for the world to see. 

That’s all they get. I’m special. I know I am. I am going places in life and although I’ve been treading water for some time now, I have yet to exhaust all my efforts. 

My time will come. Until then, I am enjoying this road of self discovery. School is tough. Probably always will be considering I will continue attending full time and working full time.. But this won’t be forever. The projects I have due mainly involve life experiences, and in doing so, I am finding my life to be quite impressive. My mother was right, (okay Justine you were too), I don’t give myself enough credit. When I get stopped by random members at the gym and go into a little detail of my hectic life, their reactions alone make me aware of just how hard I am working. 

Clients in the morning, school for a few hours, then back to another location to train 8 or so clients. Everyday I clock in to one or another location. I find the 12 minute tan, or a late start of 11 on Fridays, to be my down time. I’m usually tired, can squeeze in a cat nap here and there.. But don’t mind being incredibly busy because I feel if I had nothing to do, I’d do just that.. nothing. At one point I felt worthless because I wasn’t doing anything with my time .. And now that I have none to spare, it makes you appreciate the simplest things.. (Or make you quite irritable when people don’t respect it). 

I thank God every day for finally opening my eyes.. my heart.. but more so my mind. The woman I am becoming is something to be proud of. 

Not for nothing.

I’m going to start documenting more of my daily experiences. I feel like so much goes on through out my day that most of it is worth noting.

Like how whenever I step foot into an –fitness, I am stopped quite frequently. I haven’t been to the Waukegan location in a while because of relationship issues, but more so because I was told I had to pick one location. Why they would risk my clients being upset, is beyond me but very like this company. It’s me who isn’t benefiting from working multiple locations. Time, gas, money.. I mean, I get paid $6 (before this “big time” promotion. Yes you read that right), me going to Waukegan to train, doesn’t make much sense. But I do it, why? Because my clients truly are everything. 

So when I visit these locations, an hour and half early to squeeze a workout in, I get stopped a lot. Out of the 90 minutes I had to myself, atleast 45 of those were used to talk to members, answer questions, bring them up to speed with my life or help them with theirs… Some of them geniunely care about my well being and that, THAT is why I do this. Shit pay, living pay check to pay check while I park my car that’s breaking down daily next to the sports cars of these sales guys. These “general managers” have it pretty nice doing nothing while they leave for the day in a brand new car. I barely get time to eat or go the bathroom because I’m booked back to back, yet anyone else gets to leave whenever, put their feet up while they play FarmVille or some other addicting game they’re wasting their time on. I have zero incentive to work here. Took a huge pay cut, I have no insurance, and the company could give a shit about me. It’s disheartening, to say the least. 

So when I have random members compliment me on the work that I’m doing, although it doesn’t pay the bills, it does more for me than money ever will. Take today for example, before I even finished my workout I had 4 members walk up and start conversations. Some about where I’ve been, other complimenting how “good I look”.. But the ones that truly stick with me are the ones that see me and my clients working together. “I’ve been watching you, you are a great trainer”, “this club needs more people like you”.. Those comments (the acknowledgement), make the shitty pay and long hours so worth it. One day this will all make sense. 

She’s baaaack!

I was going to write a pretty personal post but realized I need a little more time to gather my thoughts. The post will be extreme but my voice should be heard, regardless of possible backlash. 

So before we even scratch the surface, a little look into why I’ve been mia..

I started school full time. I had plans to post my reflections when the semester ended, but clearly FB and ig and doing nothing with my time when I could be writing, is (or was) more important. I’m hoping that changes. Even with a few more writing classes than last semester, I don’t want to use that as an excuse. I want to write. I want the motivation back to write. I am extremely excited about becoming a better writer.. But the start to becoming better at writing, is to write.

I’m here, alive and well.. I suppose. Besides a bruised foot from dropping a weight on it, due to not paying attention for the mere fact I was huffing and puffing because no one reracks their weights.. no one. Except me of course :P.. But outside of that, I’m holding up pretty well. 

Another semester has begun so I’m barely into the whole mix of things. Still full time, but already can tell these classes are no joke. I just have to be on my toes. I thought I could skate by last semester, just doing the work.. Still participating and fully active, but I could have done more. Luckily for me, I was placed on the honor roll again, even after an honest mistake took place. Long story short, I started working full time (training clients which is rewarding, yet exhausting) while preparing for finals. It was a dumb decision in which I took a huge pay cut (to work more for a company that doesn’t give a shit about me), all the while taking my energy away from school, the true desire I have to achieve. Anyways, I had a pretty long paper due and that’s where most of my time was spent doing. While revising the paper, I realized I had a two page paper due in 20 minutes which just so happened to be the same topic as the much longer paper. So, my smart ass improvising self did, was take a snippet of the longer paper and use it for the paper that was due shortly. Now, I complain a lot due to the lack of common sense people have, but in no way shape or form did I think what I was doing was wrong. Dumb yes, illegal hell no. After all, it was my own work. A little later down the road, okay 24 hours later.. It kept me up at night. I turned in the paper, but started thinking. This was for an ETHICS class. Not only was what I did ethically wrong, I felt it was disrespectful to the teacher and ever since I have hurt people in my life, I vowed to become a better person not only for myself but for society. So, with a guilty conscious wearing thin, I emailed the teacher. I told her what I had done, apologized and told her I’d gladly accept the zero. Well, she thanked me for the honesty and did in fact give me the zero which ironically took me from a high b to barely passing with a 5% (with extra credit, I received a low B as a final grade), all for making the right decision. It hurt me, but it was my own fault and I have no one else to blame. Although I could have gotten away with it, it was something that should have never been done in the first place. Lesson learned. So apologies that that was not in fact a long story short, but you came here to read right? 🙂

Something else worth noting, one of my professors (who I now meet with regularly), has become such a great influence in my life and has truly made me excited for school. She is a teacher that WANTS you to succeed. Tough as shit, but truly amazing. She one time called me brilliant before I had to write my first paper for her, and y’all should know I don’t edit because I’m so not confident anymore about my writing, that you can just imagine the pressure I had writing it? Complete and utter shit show to say the least.. 

That was the extent of last semester. I took it with a grain of salt and realized I’m spreading myself pretty thin. Even with being a full time student, I took on more clients (okay I doubled my clientele), which should be a good thing.. However, I’ve bitched long enough about this company (and how I am busting my ass for zero appreciation, though 12/13 I received my first thank you in 3 years) so you know how I feel, so get this. My job was almost in the air after a random member accused me of calling a client a bitch. Laughable .. Excuse me? I swear we all know that.. But my clients are the ONLY reason I stay where I’m at. I legit have zero incentive of working for this company besides creating these genuine and incredible relationships with my clients. Why would I ever do such a thing? After I asked my “boss” if that came from my clients mouth he said no and wouldn’t tell me who from. After saying I have more customer service issues with another said couple, I flipped. I walked away and was stopped by yet another member. He goes, “not for nothing, but the guy with the backwards bears hat snitched on you”.. I was floored. I had never seen this guy in my life before. That was besides the point, after I texted both people in question, I screenshotted the conversations. They couldn’t believe what was going on and said they “loved me as not only a trainer but as a person”. I sent the conversations to my boss saying, thanks for believing/trusting me. Told me he’d tell me on Monday if I was still employed. Monday, he texts me saying he’ll give me another chance. Excuse me again? I’ll give this company another chance is more like it.. Come Tuesday, they promoted me. Okay let’s not get excited, they’re just giving me the pay they once took, back. Fantastic. Thanks so much..

Smh. Nothing else is really coming to mind.. Except I have never had so many clients motivated and excited to do the work that’s in front of them. When they get excited for meeting their protein goal, or wanting to learn to do regular push ups, it literally makes my heart happy. I just hope my experiences that will now be made public, can help the rest of the world unfuck itself.