I was drinking a gin and tonic on The Frying Pan when I opened the message.
Wait. For non-New Yorkers, that last sentence isn’t going to make much sense. So let me explain.
“The Frying Pan” is an old tug boat they turned into a floating restaurant/bar docked in the Hudson River right off of the West Side Highway.
This was Memorial Day Weekend, 2009 and I had met up with some of my college buddies and our wives to catch up and kick off the holiday weekend.
Back to the message. It was one I had been waiting for weeks.
You see, and many of you already know this story so bear with me so I can catch the newbies up to speed, earlier that year I had left my 14 year advertising career in order to become a personal trainer.
Advertising was fine but my career up to that point could be described most accurately as “meh”. I was doing less than mediocre work and mediocre agencies and I just wasn’t really getting anywhere.
Plus I had fallen in love with fitness and I had probably watched to many 80’s after school specials that encouraged me to follow my dreams (while also avoiding PCP) that I decided it was time to make a change.
Sure, I was in my mid-30s, had a wife and a mortgage, but how hard could it be?
I started by training some friends. One of which was an hour drive away. The other wanted to train at 5:30AM in her building gym but didn’t get out of bed until about 8AM on roughly half the days we were scheduled to train.
Such is the life of independent personal training. You take the jobs where you can get them and clients have hired you not because of your passion or your program design but because they realize that they will never do this without someone forcing them to do it. And in the case of “5:30AM Rachel” that was still only about 50% of the time.
One thing I always regretted or, maybe better said, learned from my early advertising days was my sense of entitlement. I was a good person. I graduated from an accredited school. I would arrive mostly on time. Surely this meant that I should be gainfully employed post-haste and live in a fancy downtown loft that would even make the ladies from the show Friends blush.
But that is not what happened. And rather than taking an objective look at my circumstances and pursue growth and skills, I spent the first year after my college graduation depressed, playing hours of computer solitaire and wondering why I wasn’t gainfully employed.
I was not going to make this same mistake twice.
So rather than piece together a career based on early morning subway travel to apartment gyms where I’d wonder how long I’d have to wait for no-shows before I could leave, I decided to reach out to the best facility in NYC - Peak Performance - and ask them for not a job but for an opportunity.
I emailed the Director of Personal Training, a charismatic, jiu-jitsu enthusiast named Tim, and explained my situation. I told him I wasn’t asking for a job as I didn’t think I was qualified for one. I just wanted the ability to come in and learn. And, in exchange, I would work for free doing whatever they needed me to do. Work the front desk or mop up the gym floor or clean the bathrooms or whatever.
This wasn’t a ploy. I was very earnest in my offer. I would be more than happy to do menial tasks in order to be in an environment where I could legitimately learn from the best in the game.
I don’t know what compelled my to pull out my iPhone 2 right after the first sip of my cocktail on The Frying Pan (we didn’t obsessively check emails in those days) but up popped a message from Tim asking if I would come in and meet with the owner, Joe, the following week.
And to shorten up this story that is what led to me becoming an unpaid intern, staff trainer and ultimately Tim’s replacement when he decided to move to the west coast in my nearly 9 years at Peak.
For many people, myself included, there is nearly nothing scarier than change. To go from the known to the unknown. To go from reliable paycheck and co-workers you eat lunch with daily and 9:30AM status meetings to unpaid intern in a field where you don’t know what your doing around people who wonder who the fuck the new guy is.
But change is often the greatest thing you will ever experience in your life. Because whether it’s a new job or a new gym or a new relationship, when change works out (and, to be fair, it doesn’t always) it can deliver more than you ever thought possible.
And once you realize that stepping into the unknown won’t kill you, something interesting happens. You become more willing to embrace the next change when it arrives
Exactly three years later, I found myself seeking shelter under a Brooklyn awning with two boxes of ice pops - one raspberry, one orange - which I was sent to retrieve for my wife. She was deep in labor with our son Henry and I’m not sure if she really wanted ice pops or was just giving me something to do.
But after going to two stores and heading back home I got caught in perhaps the most intense and magical lightning storm of my life. Not to get too mythological here, but as the thunder cracked over my head the reality set in that another big change was about to come.
Roughly 10 hours later, our son Henry arrived. Today is his birthday.
Memorial Day is, rightfully, a time of remembrance. Of recalling people we love who have passed and honoring those who have sacrificed for ourselves, our community and our country.
But for me, Memorial Day will always signify a time for change. A time to take chances, to seek growth, to face your fears and be rewarded for it in ways you could never imagine.
It seems to me that every meaningful thing in life starts with uncertainty
Happy Birthday, Henry. Dad loves you.