Hmm, past careers? I haven’t had what I would call “careers,” but I had two jobs prior to my current thing that were important to me.
When I was dropping in and out of college at 20 I took a second job at a women’s gym. In addition to needing to supplement my waitressing income, I wanted to be able to use the facility for free. I loved it so much, and quickly flipped to full time at the gym, part time at the restaurant, then began making enough money at the gym to support myself and gave up on both waitressing and college (for the moment). I’m not a gym rat type, and was the nerdy pet of my new crowd. I was selling memberships, and I quickly became the go-to for hurt or insecure people. Women going through a divorce, older women, awkward young girls - if they were afraid to be there, I was their guy. I also taught water aerobics to a class of elderly women. I absolutely adored that job. My bosses were expanding and making deals - this was during the wild west of gyms, which made money by closing and opening under new names/management, and re-selling memberships. I went into management with them and moved from Virginia to South Carolina (to co-ed gyms!) and then to Dallas/Ft. Worth, where we took over a chain of really nice health and racquetball facilities.
I got married and pregnant and later took a job as a weight loss counselor at a Jenny Craig weight loss center. I wore a lab coat and carried a clipboard, which lol. But I loved that job, too, and it loved me. My people lost enough weight on average that I had to have a talk with a regional director about what I was doing, the implication being that I was somehow strong-arming the clients. But no, I simply reminded them that of course they could do what they wanted to do, but if what they wanted to do was lose weight, what they needed to do was follow the program. And they did. I loved the trainings we had re: nutrition and lifestyle, I loved teaching the classes we had. Just loved all of it.
I see my career as a therapist as a natural progression. Although it’s far from all I do, identifying people’s goals and selling them back is a big part of it, which I learned from the above, not from graduate school. The people I worked for in the gyms spent a good bit of money giving us sales training - I use it all the time, and did for the weight loss. Now I use it to remind people that they want a better marriage…to be a better parent…to stop whatever destructive habit…
Although fitness and diet are fascinations of mine, I don’t particularly care about others’ habits or levels of fitness. Unless they care, and then I’m all about it. Since it comes up regularly at work, given that it’s a part of life for everyone, I’m glad I know stuff about it.
weekends .