Merchant Ivory
October 4, 2009
I’ve been gone a while. My apologies. I went and got myself a job in the field I was speaking of earlier. I’m a personal trainer at a big fancy gym. World class and full of city folk trying obtain that greater self, or reduce that lesser being to an inaudible hum. It’s strange; I am a cross between a salesman, a counselor, and a bloodless plastic surgeon. Strangers pay thousands of dollars to amend the choices they’ve made and the form they’ve been given. They trust that I can make them better.
I’m more adept at the sales part then I expected. The charisma and rhetoric I’ve spent in clubs and crowds has proved devastating in the smaller confines of a fitness studio. I can make people feel and see and believe what I want; create an image of who they could be by describing the path it takes to get there. Confidence and eloquence proved a ready substitute for experience; and yet I wonder if they’re buying me, themselves, or something else all together? Am I creating need or promising hope? And can I deliver on either. I suspect so. In time. I see the value, but the manipulation comes so easily it can’t help but feel uncharitable
And I wonder if gifts are given with intent, with specific expectation that they will be used for pure things apart from the world, or if they’re ours to do with as we please? If they are better unspent than ignoble? Maybe I’m just tired.
October 4, 2009 at 4:10 pm
I think, to be honest, they are there for a variety of reasons which will often prove to have little to do with what you are paid to offer and the forum from which you offer it. Time will tell, but very few people truly understand their motivations much less the roads they take.
That is not to say that you will not be able to give them something if you chose to do so. Many may try to take things from you that you did not expect, plan for, or feel prepared to offer let alone give.
As for gifts? Most often gifts are given with intent and selfish motivations. Sometimes they are earnest and pure. Many times they are not even noticed and realized until the giver is gone, or ever known, and those are the truly precious gifts given out of pure heart and spirit.
I hope you enjoy your job, and I hope you get published so that you can decide if you like it enough so that you can keep it or give it up at will.
I like your blog. You’re an excellent writer with marvelous insights.
October 14, 2009 at 5:17 pm
Gosh, you know, I just recently found this blog and it is one of my favorites, and now no one seems to be around.
I checked–I don’t smell. Honest.
October 14, 2009 at 9:57 pm
Sorry my friend, I very much appreciate the readership. Work is just a bit crazy right now so my internet presence is diminished. Good stuff is on the way soon.
October 14, 2009 at 10:10 pm
Well, one can’t fault a lad for working–especially in these times.
No rush, dear. Writing is kind of like sex–too much pressure is never a good thing. Some things are worth waiting for. I’ll just sit back and have a snack.
October 17, 2009 at 3:28 pm
Congratulations, AJ. I trust they are in good hands. I would trust myself in your hands.
October 17, 2009 at 7:02 pm
I really enjoyed how you see your job as something more. I often think of my job(s) as something else. Something where I have meaning and matter. Where my pay shouldn’t be justified by anything. How do you really feel about these customers though? You know that nobody can stick to a routine. These people will come and pay and see you a few times, until they have a bad day and the ever so inviting couch and bag of Doritos is much more enticing. I wish you the best of luck though.
November 23, 2009 at 12:27 am
I recently joined a gym. It had been a long time but I’m a different sort of woman than when last I joined one. I do not hate myself. I do not wish for someone to work magic on me. I do not need someone to make me believe that it is the machines and the space and the bouncy perky music which will change my frame of 5′5″ with min ten inch difference between bust and waist and another ten between waist and hips into something more akin to a “Twiggy” runway model by sheer osmosis… I know it is all up to me and I am now comfortable with the shape and size I hold in this world. I just want to be active and fit and not let my bones shrink down to nothing. I want to sleep better. And I told the man who provided me with my free training session pretty much exactly that. He didn’t really know how to deal with it. He heard me but it did not quite compute.
It’s a difficult job you are in – one that depends almost as much on a client’s continued sense of dissatisfaction with self as it does on helping people to achieve goals that bring them to peace with themselves. As such, all your mullings here speak volumes to how well you understand this and how good you will be -indeed likely already are – at this job. That you ask these questions has you arms and legs above most of the people I’ve known in that industry and I’ve known quite a few…
And, in answer to your question – I believe that they are buying all of it. They must in order to take the first step. The key, perhaps, is to use all that power of persuasion, that real understanding of human beings that reveals itself so clearly in your essays and fiction, and help them learn to buy into themselves first and foremost so that they can own what you teach them. All the way through. So, that your business can be built far more on the referral and request of you by people who no longer “hate” themselves because you helped to teach them how than it is on any form of perpetual dissatisfaction…
But, in this – as in all things – I may very well have my head squarely up my arse.