An Existential Moment
I quit my full time job as a healthcare consultant to pursue a career in personal training and body work. I did it during a pandemic and a recession. I can’t fully articulate why, I just knew it was right. But, I think trying to catalog the events that led up to this decision will provide some clarity for me.
Earlier this year, I decided to start studying for a personal training certification. It had always been an option in the back of my mind that I didn’t previously have time to explore. I enjoyed the studies and felt like it would be a nice side hustle. Since then, my mind has been running with new ideas, philosophies, and methods that combined my liberation studies with this new foundational knowledge of fitness.
Once the COVID-19 restrictions hit Washington, I lost a lot of distractions. I couldn’t go to the gym, I couldn’t travel for work, I couldn’t go out with friends. I spent more time sitting with myself and blurring the boundaries between work hours and non-work hours. My whole life started to become my job which I was already struggling with lukewarm feelings about for months.
Some time in March, I had taken up a practice of daily meditation using the app Headspace. A couple friends and I made a pact to take up daily meditation and my company offered a free 3-month membership for Headspace so I decided to try and enjoyed it. Things really changed for me when I started the prioritization pack - basically, a 10-day daily guided meditation pack.
Prior to this meditation pack, I blamed myself for “laziness” and my lack of focus and motivation to complete even seemingly simple tasks at work in a timely and effective manner. I felt like I was deteriorating and would never be able to apply myself again. I cried too much. My days of passion, creativity, and drive were behind me and I was destined to live the rest of my life as a drag on the people around me.
For ten days, I woke up and listened to this soothing voice from the app talk to me about why my daily tasks felt so hard and why I kept failing to do the things I said I would. It slowly shifted my failure from a shortcoming of mine to an evaluation of whether what I was doing was right for me anymore. The voice said something along the lines of “Reflect on the type of tasks you struggle with day to day, do they matter to you? Is there a pattern of the type of tasks you keep failing to do everyday? If so, you probably need to re-evaluate what matters to you and prioritize those tasks.” I thought to myself, “what?? I have the option to change the tasks I have?” And it clicked. My '“laziness” was trying to tell me something and I had to pause long enough to listen.
I grew out of the job. The civil uprising in America this summer as a response to police brutality, the horrendous COVID response by the federal government, and the continually exploitative practices of corporations sent me down a road I couldn’t return from. The tremendous work of organizers before me and during this time radicalized me out of the need for individual security and external validation. I was finally able to articulate why I hated public corporations for the labor exploitation, environmental damage and countless other acts of class violence they caused. I resented my job for distracting me. “Serving the best interests of shareholders” became figuratively suffocating.
Eventually, all this came to a head and I took an abrupt leave of absence due to a complete meltdown. I wasn’t happy. I was insecure and isolated from my colleagues who I couldn’t relate to anymore. I felt useless and all of these feelings had been building steadily over the past few months to the point where it physically hurt to be doing my job (which consisted of sitting at my kitchen table in front of my computer all day so, surely, it shouldn’t have been that painful for me). There are so many wrongs in the world already weighing on me, why was I willingly putting myself through this?
The timing of the universe is a funny thing. I had another option - personal training. I got my life in order and threw myself into training and I haven’t looked back since. I thought it would feel like stepping off of a cliff and free falling when I quit - leaving a secure job when I haven’t known anything else since school. But it honestly felt like I’ve been free falling this whole time and I’ve finally landed and found my footing. I can move towards a life that I want, for myself and the people around me. There is so much I love about the opportunities I have now. There is a lot of privilege involved with these decisions and there is definitely some level of security that I’ve maintained. Money is a factor. Health insurance is a factor. Housing is a factor. I consider myself a part of the petty bourgeoisie and therefore have a lot of flexibility in these types of decisions with fairly little repercussions. I’m not here to give advice or answer questions because I don’t think I have all the answers, but hopefully this level of transparency provides some relief.
I don’t know how to neatly summarize this experience but my therapist called it an existential moment. We’re all on our own paths and I think that I’ve finally internalized the idea that the world is a big place and I have options that all come down to divine timing. To others, one day something will agitate you enough to change. Until then, the pieces are coming together in ways that don’t make sense, that feel difficult or hurtful, or feel outright wrong. Eventually, the existential moment will come and things will fit again.
S/O to these people/organizations for contributing to my ongoing journey of unlearning my capitalistic/individualistic programming. I definitely recommend giving these people your neoliberal coins:
and many more I can’t mentally catalogue.
