Fit With Flash

It’s been about 2.5 years since I’ve written on this page, and although nobody’s missing these posts – blogs have been dying for a long while now – I’ve been missing the writing process lately and felt like starting back up. I guess that’s as good a reason as any to restart.

Like every other person in the rest of the damn world, the last couple years have been the roughest of my life. My husband and I split up, I almost lost my business due to the pandemic, my beloved dog Tango passed away from cancer, and I suffered a pretty bad knee injury that’s left me unable to dance, climb, run, jump, and do most of my physical job for the past year. The quadruple whammy of emotional, mental, financial, and physical pain seemed like more than I could handle for a while there.

But also like the rest of the world, I had to figure out how to re-work my life from nearly every angle. I’ve spent a lot of time (and am frankly still working on) prioritizing my needs. I finally got up the nerve to go to therapy. I read this book and am still on this book. I got my nutrition coaching certification that I’d been meaning to get for the past 7 years. I re-worked some things in the business and I’m happy to report it’s still in the black. I’m in a relationship this is healthy and positive… and local. My knee is healing. My bank account is healing. My heart is healing.

No matter what kind of pain it is, a lot of things hurt way more than we think they can. The process of healing feels sometimes just as bad. Healing always takes longer than we want it to and the process is never as linear as we need it to be. It’s one step forward and two steps back for such a long time… until one day it’s two steps forward and only one back. Eventually we start having more good days than bad ones and recognize that we’re getting better. And although the scars left behind will always be there, and the hesitation to try again may scare the shit out of us, hopefully we’ve learned something new from the experience(s) and are ready to do some things differently moving forward. We’re always stronger than we think we are. We keep trying and we keep going.

For everybody else that’s rebuilding their lives, I imagine it feels similar to this period of the pandemic; we may not feel like we’re entirely out of the woods, but we are heading in that direction. We’re learning to live in new and safer ways and, if we’re smart, making a few more contingency plans.

So, now that I’m back on this site, there’s a little updating to do. Bear with me with I update old links and update the look and feel of this space.

I’m still here and I’m looking forward to writing more often. I’m glad you’re here too. Drop your name and blog in the comments if you’ve gotten back on the blogging wagon as well!

Thanks for reading.

~ Ami

It’s easy to forget how far you’ve come sometimes. Just like how you won’t notice subtle changes in your child’s height until you measure them, we don’t notice our own improvements until we track them and pay attention. This year I’m taking stock of a bunch of different metrics in my life.

From my finances, to my business and relationships, I wanted to take a moment and look at exactly where I was at the start of this year. A year from now, I’d like to look back at it all to see what’s working, what’s not, and how to assess for my year ahead.

Whether you want to create a spreadsheet or simply a list in your phone’s notepad, here’s what I am tracking if you’d like to do the same:

Finances: Assets

• Checking Account Balance
• Savings Account Balance
• Tax Savings Account Balance
• Money Market Account Balance
• Roth IRA Balance
• Business Account Balance

Finances: Debts

• Personal Credit Card Balance
• Business Credit Card Balance
• Car Loan Balance
• iPhone Balance (I hate that I even had to write that)

Business: Contract Work

• Previous Year’s Workshop total
• Previous Year’s workshop attendee total
• Previous Year’s Conferences & Preferences (and this year’s goals)
• Previous Year’s Online Business Numbers: Profit/Loss

Business: Studio

• Current Number of Classes & Schedule
• Class Attendance Averages
• Current Member Number
• Current Staff/Instructor List
• Monthly Average Profit/Loss

Personal: Body

My studio members and personal training clients are all getting their assessments done and so I’m doing the same work they are and am with them every step of the way.

• Weight as of January 2nd
• Body Measurements in Inches
• Body Fat Percentage and BMI
• Strength Test Measurements
• Current Injuries / Tweaks (and what I’m recovering from)
• 2020 Goals from a movement hobby perspective (dance class and climbing goals)

Personal: Other

• Relationship status
• Status of relationships with family members
• Status of relationships with close friends
• What I’d like to do differently in 2020
• Previous Year’s Travel
• This Year’s Travel Dreams/Goals
• Previous Year’s Proudest Moments
• This Year’s Dreams/Goals

If I think back at where I was this time last year, I know some areas have improved while others have declined. I don’t have exact stats on those like I will this time next year, but I can remember certain figures. This has helped me shape how I’d like to focus and prioritize the upcoming year. If you were to do the same thing, what sorts of things would you want to take stock of in your life currently?

Happy New Year, everybody!

In 2009, on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, I’d been looking for a dog when one showed up behind the front desk at Barry’s Bootcamp – a studio I taught bootcamp classes at in San Diego. Over the months prior several dogs had been rescued from a kill shelter in L.A. by my boss, Joey Gonzalez, and placed at the desk waiting for somebody to get done with their workouts, fall in love with them, and adopt them. Several dogs had come and gone, all ridiculously cute. Tango was the one I fell in love with immediately. [Read more…]