Turning Lemons Into Lemonade

I'm a firm believer that things happen for a reason and the often times things that may appear on the surface to be unrelated are often connected in some way. Kind of like meeting a stranger in the airport only to discover you both know the same person. I'm not sure who first coined the expression "When life hands you lemons, make lemonade," but he/she was a wise soul. I was given a big ole lemon back in February when I was laid off from my job of 13 years as a writer/editor at an educational publishing company. To make matters worse, even though they let me go due to the economy (along with 14 others), they still held me to a non-compete agreement I had signed many years ago. So, basically I'm not able to work in my field for 18 months. I've been told I would probably win if I took them to court over the issue, but it took most of my funds just to find that out.

Back in 1997 something made me decide to run a marathon. My first marathon—New York City. A few years later in 2001, I was diagnosed with Colitis. It was my running that helped me to recover from a colitis-related surgery in 2002. If I had not had my running and had not set a goal to run the Nashville Marathon 8 months after my surgery, I doubt I would have recovered as quickly as I did. That marathon goal also led me to my running group which has been a wonderful source of support and inspiration. I also believe that my fitness and running have been a big part of my remission from my colitis for most of the past 5 years. A running injury about 3 years ago led me to the gym for strength training while not being able to run for 3 months. This led me into an entirely new world of overall fitness and strength training.

My increased knowledge of running and fitness as well as my love of writing, led me to create this blog—RunnerDude's Blog. You guys have helped push the blog up to #11 on the Top21RunningSites site. THANKS! The blog gets hundreds of readers every week from all over the country and the world—Ireland, Finland, Scotland, Italy, Brazil, Australia, India, Greece, etc. Writing for the blog has really opened my eyes to something—I love researching, reading about, and sharing my running and fitness knowledge with others.

Here comes the lemonade part....losing my job was a huge blow, both to my confidence and to my sense of self, but it has opened up an entirely new opportunity. The past 10 years has been full of one fitness/running related event leading into another with me loving and growing from each. It finally dawned on me that maybe I need to take my life into a new direction—one in which I could combine my love of writing, teaching, running and fitness. In July I'm getting my RRCA running coach certification and then I'm entering a 6-month diploma program with NPTI (National Personal Training Institute) to become a personal trainer and nutrition consultant. My dream is to combine coaching runners, personal training, life coaching, and nutrition consulting into a business to help others on their way to becoming fitter individuals.

I'm both scared to death and excited about what lies ahead. I'd love to hear from anyone who's made similar transitions.