Rumors had been spreading all week.
By: Tali Zabari
Tags: Unemployment, Covid 19, Personal Development, Transitions, Fitness

Rumors had been spreading all week.

My personal training clients warmed up on the rowing machines telling me all about how their travel plans to Asia had been cancelled and that all of their meetings had been relocated digitally. In a few short days, what was a rumor became deserted spaces in what is usually a bustling town of its own: Nike WHQ. All the gyms were shutting down and Covid-19 left us all wondering…

I had been working at Nike a little over two years.

I began with a single gig working two hours a week conducting a women’s weightlifting program. It became a full time job with 13 personal training clients, coaching with a brand new CrossFit affiliate, and I had recently established my own little lifting club on Thursday evenings after I had been recently estranged from my own lifting tribe. I built myself up at Nike.

I had been coaching CrossFit and the like since I was 19, and I was 28 when Covid-19 came to town. My career as a coach died along with the shutdowns, and though I hadn’t seen myself coaching professionally forever, I like to think I left on top.

That’s the same way I left my Olympic weightlifting team. I had the best years of my lifting career fresh under my belt — two state titles, 3 years serving as team captain, and all of my adult life’s highlights. It was the time of my life.

But both were left with heartbreak.

Though leaving my team was in my control, I had let so many things slide that I came to resent it, and leaving felt like the only way to alleviate the pressure building within me.

But leaving Nike was not. I was a contract worker and I could see myself working there for a long while. I made my own hours, I had control of who I worked with, and I created my own coaching content. It was the height of my coaching career getting to work at cutting edge facilities, titans in the industry, and for once, a steady and livable paycheck.

It was hard to give it all up.

I knew somehow that I probably would never work in the fitness industry again.

It’s amazing I made it in at all.

I never cared for sport growing up. I was too embarrassed by the thought of trying new things that I was paralyzed all the while thinking it was the ‘cool’ thing to do.

But fitness became the longest relationship I have ever been in and I take great pride in my body of work. I made all of my decisions in favor of my job and my athletic career that now being without it has me constantly questioning what is left of me. Who am I really without them?

At times it truly feels all behind me, like looking back on an entirely different person’s life.

But with change comes a new life, new perspective for better or for worse, and pivoting is the only way I know to stay afloat.

Personal development to me now is learning to play music, living on a ranch in rural Oregon and my professional life is starting from scratch and building my freelance writing portfolio.

I am 30 years old now, and starting over now might not mean much to the many who have done it over and over, but this is the first time in my adult life that I have been asked to do so.

My circumstances, my desires are demanding it of me, and for now it feels like throwing everything I can get my hands on at the wall waiting to see what sticks.

I’m doing things I never used to do and it’s only a matter of time that I will probably move on from them too.