Sundays are short days at work; we only work 2-8pm. Snickers had some things to tend to and then wanted to go night fishing so he left around 5:30pm, leaving me to manage the club by myself. With no real plans on what to do after work, I decided that I'd stay behind to do some computer prep work for the upcoming week.
Five minutes before closing time, my Poster Child Girl came in and, with having no real intentions on leaving anytime soon, I told her to gear up for training. Another member shortly followed as did two of my close boxing buddies who came by to chat.
Ended up getting into quite the in depth and personal conversation with one of my members who has become a friend I chat daily with when he trains. He had asked me if I missed "home" and, without even thinking, I responded, "my home is ten minutes away, I'm there everyday". Turns out he meant Canada. I suppose I should have assumed this but honestly I don't consider Canada my home. Ever since I started Flipside Fitness in 2011 I made a conscious effort to live where I am, not where my memories are. Canada isn't really where my family is either because now that I'm married I do have family here in Korea -- my in-laws.
Too often I find that the foreigners here have a very temporary mindset, they just assume Korea is but a mere stepping stone to a better place in life, a stepping stone towards a "real" career and "real" life. I too was guilty of sporting this mindset, the idea that Korea was just temporary, but look... nine years later and I'm still here. Nowadays foreigners are staying longer and longer in Korea. I for one will be the first to admit it's hard for me to get close to foreigners, especially those who are "right off the plane" so to speak, because it's really hard to get into a friendship knowing that they'll most likely leave. This month two of my former boxercise ladies are returning to Korea to visit and I am absolutely thrilled. I can't even tell you how much I've been anticipating their return -- I've been counting down the days like it's Christmas and I'm 10 again.
I've been wanting to plan more Flipside Fitness events as well as events for Hulk's, to get more foreigners involved and to help build up the foreign community, but my time is so consumed by the boxing club. Even when I'm not working I'm working. Day offs are spent doing the books or translating files for clients or meeting up with sponsors and potential sponsors. This weekend I may be spending my day off out in Seoul giving business start-up advice to other entrepreneurs. Work technically starts at 2pm but it really starts well in the morning, right after we wake up -- grocery shopping for the juice bar, trips to the hardware store for this or that, phone calls to suppliers and trips to the bank. Work finishes at midnight but closing time really means "closing soon" time or it's off to go eat and discus more business, time to email responses to members who email us or time to text message other members about their training. The boxing club has devoured all our free time and extra thoughts but it is our dream and we love it, just makes it hard to do anything else but it.
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