How C25K Changed My Life
NickeeCoco
Posts: 130
A thread I responded to earlier today got me thinking about how C25K truly changed my life. I thought I'd share my story in hopes to encourage other people who are doing C25K or are thinking about starting it. I'll have to give you some background information, so please bear with me.
Starting at the age of ten I started singing lessons. My mother was a private piano teacher, so music was an integral part of my life growing up. I loved performing. I took dance lessons, I got involved in theatre work. I was in my first musical at the age of 13 which was performed by a local theatre group at the main theatre which holds 2000 people. I realized then that this was my calling. I got both chorus and dancer roles throughout my teenage years, and then when I was seventeen I got the role of Maggie in A Chorus Line. When I was eighteen I had a supporting role in the Canadian premiere of the musical Titanic.
I graduated high school and auditioned for role after role, but nothing. I waitressed, bussed, dish washed, bartended, coat checked, you name it. The stereotypical jobs an out of work actor had. At the age of twenty one I decided that I didn't want to be a waitress for the rest of my life, so I went to university. I stopped dancing. I stopped singing. I stopped acting.
I applied as a mature student in the continuing education program, so I didn't have a declared major. After my first semester, though, I discovered Classical Civilizations (the study of ancient Greece and Rome) and fell in love. I applied to the program and was accepted. I found something I was really good at and had a strong aptitude for. I was a student representative for the departmental council, I was a teacher's assistant and the president of the Classics Club. I presented my own research and gave lectures at conferences. I was extremely involved and loved every second of it. I was on track to do my PhD and become a professor. My professors were grooming me toward this by giving me private classes, where it'd be just me and them in their office, doing one on one lessons.
In 2007 I went off to Ireland to take an intensive ancient Greek language course. When I returned, I was slightly overweight, and lonely, since all of my close friends had graduated when I was off in Ireland and they had all taken jobs outside of the city where we lived. I started going to this one sports bar all the time, because a friend of mine bartended there. There, I met a wonderful man. I ended up marrying him last year.
However, in choosing to marry him, I chose to give up my dreams and goals. In order to do my MA and PhD I'd have to leave town. Not only that, but as a professor, I'd have to apply to a job wherever it was. That could mean moving out of the country. He has a fabulous career in engineering for a very good company that treats him very well. He was not willing to move. So, I chose to give that up to be with him. That was MY choice. Not his. I don't regret it.
However, in 2008 I was a graduate with a useless degree (as in, a BA in Classics doesn't really open the job opportunities. Let's face it, most people don't even know what Classics is), working as a manager at McDonalds. I was MISERABLE. I gained weight.
Then, in 2010, sick and tired of being treated like crap by people who think that if you work at McDonald's you must be an idiot and therefore are less than human and can be treated like you're a waste of flesh, I got a job as an operations coodinator for a major retail chain. It was great at first, because I wasn't greasy and being yelled at all the time. Then, the newness disappeared and it was the same thing as McDonald's. It wasn't fulfilling. I was just biding my time.
Last year, we got married, and it was wonderful.
But I started to become more and more depressed. Here I was, 30 years old, making only a dollar over minimum wage at a crappy job with nothing to keep me going except for my wonderful husband. There was nothing else that was fulfilling or meaningful in my life. My husband and I discussed me going back to school, but they were always talks about the future, and we never made actual plans and started implementing them. They were more "What ifs" than "Let's do this".
I turned 31 this February, and the day after my birthday, I quit smoking. I just decided, nope, I need to stop this crap. This is bad. Little did I know how that decision would affect me.
In June, proud of the fact that I had managed to stay smoke free after 16 years of the bad habit, I decided I needed to get active again. I had gained 17 pounds after I quit smoking.
I decided to try out C25K. Something clicked. It really just fell into place when I completed W5D3. I ran for 20 minutes straight. That was a very big day for me. It was an affirmation of what I was capable of doing. It gave me one of the biggest confidence boosts I have ever had in my life. It proved that I had the discipline to do this. Those five weeks mentally prepared me to choose to do something about the state of my life.
I began to really soul search and ask myself two really important questions:
1. What do I want out of life?
2. How can I get these things?
I realized I couldn't get what I wanted if I just sat around thinking about the future.
I talked about this with my husband. I talked about this with my mom.
I came up with a plan, with the help and support of my husband and mother.
Last month I gave notice to my boss to resign my position effective October 1st of this year. I'm going to study piano with my mom for the year. I mean, really, really study. 6 hours a day, six days a week. I am going to help my mom direct a women's choir she directs every Tuesday. By September of next year, I will be teaching classical voice lessons out of my house, just like my mother has done for the past 35 years (she started teaching voice in addition to her piano teaching in my early teens). I get to incorporate things I love into my life and make a career out of it. This is something I share with my husband, since he plays the drums and teaches drumming on the side. We get to share music, something that is very important to both of us.
I'm no longer sitting on my couch eating potato chips and dip by the bucket loads, wishing I was leading a different life.
Instead, I'm out there doing what I want to do. Instead, I'm outside running every other day. Instead, I've just signed up for a 9 week running clinic with the main specialty store in town. Instead, I'm pursuing my dreams.
C25K isn't just about losing that quitting smoking weight. It taught me really important life lessons. I am so happy I chose to do it.
Starting at the age of ten I started singing lessons. My mother was a private piano teacher, so music was an integral part of my life growing up. I loved performing. I took dance lessons, I got involved in theatre work. I was in my first musical at the age of 13 which was performed by a local theatre group at the main theatre which holds 2000 people. I realized then that this was my calling. I got both chorus and dancer roles throughout my teenage years, and then when I was seventeen I got the role of Maggie in A Chorus Line. When I was eighteen I had a supporting role in the Canadian premiere of the musical Titanic.
I graduated high school and auditioned for role after role, but nothing. I waitressed, bussed, dish washed, bartended, coat checked, you name it. The stereotypical jobs an out of work actor had. At the age of twenty one I decided that I didn't want to be a waitress for the rest of my life, so I went to university. I stopped dancing. I stopped singing. I stopped acting.
I applied as a mature student in the continuing education program, so I didn't have a declared major. After my first semester, though, I discovered Classical Civilizations (the study of ancient Greece and Rome) and fell in love. I applied to the program and was accepted. I found something I was really good at and had a strong aptitude for. I was a student representative for the departmental council, I was a teacher's assistant and the president of the Classics Club. I presented my own research and gave lectures at conferences. I was extremely involved and loved every second of it. I was on track to do my PhD and become a professor. My professors were grooming me toward this by giving me private classes, where it'd be just me and them in their office, doing one on one lessons.
In 2007 I went off to Ireland to take an intensive ancient Greek language course. When I returned, I was slightly overweight, and lonely, since all of my close friends had graduated when I was off in Ireland and they had all taken jobs outside of the city where we lived. I started going to this one sports bar all the time, because a friend of mine bartended there. There, I met a wonderful man. I ended up marrying him last year.
However, in choosing to marry him, I chose to give up my dreams and goals. In order to do my MA and PhD I'd have to leave town. Not only that, but as a professor, I'd have to apply to a job wherever it was. That could mean moving out of the country. He has a fabulous career in engineering for a very good company that treats him very well. He was not willing to move. So, I chose to give that up to be with him. That was MY choice. Not his. I don't regret it.
However, in 2008 I was a graduate with a useless degree (as in, a BA in Classics doesn't really open the job opportunities. Let's face it, most people don't even know what Classics is), working as a manager at McDonalds. I was MISERABLE. I gained weight.
Then, in 2010, sick and tired of being treated like crap by people who think that if you work at McDonald's you must be an idiot and therefore are less than human and can be treated like you're a waste of flesh, I got a job as an operations coodinator for a major retail chain. It was great at first, because I wasn't greasy and being yelled at all the time. Then, the newness disappeared and it was the same thing as McDonald's. It wasn't fulfilling. I was just biding my time.
Last year, we got married, and it was wonderful.
But I started to become more and more depressed. Here I was, 30 years old, making only a dollar over minimum wage at a crappy job with nothing to keep me going except for my wonderful husband. There was nothing else that was fulfilling or meaningful in my life. My husband and I discussed me going back to school, but they were always talks about the future, and we never made actual plans and started implementing them. They were more "What ifs" than "Let's do this".
I turned 31 this February, and the day after my birthday, I quit smoking. I just decided, nope, I need to stop this crap. This is bad. Little did I know how that decision would affect me.
In June, proud of the fact that I had managed to stay smoke free after 16 years of the bad habit, I decided I needed to get active again. I had gained 17 pounds after I quit smoking.
I decided to try out C25K. Something clicked. It really just fell into place when I completed W5D3. I ran for 20 minutes straight. That was a very big day for me. It was an affirmation of what I was capable of doing. It gave me one of the biggest confidence boosts I have ever had in my life. It proved that I had the discipline to do this. Those five weeks mentally prepared me to choose to do something about the state of my life.
I began to really soul search and ask myself two really important questions:
1. What do I want out of life?
2. How can I get these things?
I realized I couldn't get what I wanted if I just sat around thinking about the future.
I talked about this with my husband. I talked about this with my mom.
I came up with a plan, with the help and support of my husband and mother.
Last month I gave notice to my boss to resign my position effective October 1st of this year. I'm going to study piano with my mom for the year. I mean, really, really study. 6 hours a day, six days a week. I am going to help my mom direct a women's choir she directs every Tuesday. By September of next year, I will be teaching classical voice lessons out of my house, just like my mother has done for the past 35 years (she started teaching voice in addition to her piano teaching in my early teens). I get to incorporate things I love into my life and make a career out of it. This is something I share with my husband, since he plays the drums and teaches drumming on the side. We get to share music, something that is very important to both of us.
I'm no longer sitting on my couch eating potato chips and dip by the bucket loads, wishing I was leading a different life.
Instead, I'm out there doing what I want to do. Instead, I'm outside running every other day. Instead, I've just signed up for a 9 week running clinic with the main specialty store in town. Instead, I'm pursuing my dreams.
C25K isn't just about losing that quitting smoking weight. It taught me really important life lessons. I am so happy I chose to do it.
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Replies
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Now I'm crying. What an inspirational story!
While I didn't make the changes that you did in response to C25k, I experienced the same fundamental attitude shift. Doing everything it takes to be able to run for 20 minutes makes you question your assumptions about yourself and your life.
Great job on quitting smoking.0 -
What a journey! I'm so happy you found running and are getting back to doing what you love
It's so important to find happiness in all that you do, and while it's difficult, it's worth going through some struggles to get there. 0
