Happy New Year and welcome to 2020!  Well a lot has changed this past year and it’s overdue that I shared on this web site.

In 2019 I changed jobs and closed my personal training business, Total Balance Fitness. In July, I began work for Walker Methodist as a Fitness Specialist in a Senior Living Community, Havenwood of Minnetonka. This felt like a huge transition, because I spent the past decade creating and building Total Balance Fitness. It was a fantastic adventure to run a personal training business. I thrived with so much independence available to me as a contractor and sole proprietor. I found fitness coaching to be a vehicle for inspiring hope, hard work, and personal development in others. Teaching exercise was a natural extension of the educating I had already been doing at schools and in non-profits. In addition, being on my feet all day and lots of face time with people gave me energy. And watching my clients progress: the definition of rewarding.

Being your own boss has many advantages but it lacks external motivators like a manager or teammates. I needed to either bring coworkers around me, or join an existing group. I wanted to be home with my family on the evenings and weekends. My knee was and is literally wearing out, in part due to the high level of exercise required, so I knew something about the physicality of my job had to change. And some things about running a business are just plain hard (yet another new marketing campaign 🧐) or annoying (driving an hour from one client/class to another). Obviously every job has hard and annoying parts but sometimes having new hard and annoying things to do is refreshing!

The hard part about closing Total Balance Fitness has been saying goodbye to the clients I’ve built relationships with over the past decade. I mean, after you spend an hour twice a week with somebody for weeks and months and years, you really know a lot about that person and share a lot about yourself! My clients were/are my friends and I truly and dearly miss you all.

The process of finding this new position at Walker Methodist was long and full of hard decisions. For example, saying no to a job offer that really was pretty good, because I knew it wasn’t quite the right fit. Job seeking is never easy. I received invaluable help from a professional career coach and a resume writer and can happily share their names with anyone seeking help.

Where I landed is a great fit. I absolutely love being home on evenings and weekends. Working with the elderly is such a welcome relief for my body; my knee improved so greatly that I canceled my scheduled knee surgery. My new coworkers and manager respect and value me. The caring atmosphere of an established non-profit is a very refreshing change from the flash and ego in the fitness industry.

Now we begin a new year and a new decade. I have much hope for 2020 and don’t have a lot of specific goals. I want to settle in deeper to where I’ve landed (professionally and personally) and simply share love and joy with those surrounding me. I seek to be available to and vulnerable to my various communities and the wide world. And authentic to and grounded in myself and God. May peace and hope be with you in the new year as well!