Ouchii masks during the pandemic.
This blog was actually birthed during the pandemic. What a wild time. If you click around or scroll back, you’ll see at least four posts where I recapped a lot of current events that were going on during that time. When life resumed, I kind of fell off from blogging regularly. Shocking, I know.
In 2019, I was actually really stressed and spread thin. I was trying to figure out what to do with Ouchii’s various locations as I felt the stress of keeping them up and running was wiping me out. Continually releasing new merchandise while also designing and being creative was exhausting. It started to not feel fun anymore.
The fact that I was also teaching full time at Silver Creek was brutal.
I was physically a stick at the time as I was coaching 12 Zumba classes a week all across the Bay Area.
So when the pandemic hit, it literally forced me to stop.
One of my worst traits is spreading myself thin and trying hard not to disappoint people. So when I was on that high-speed train, there was no stopping it if I had my way. The pandemic gave me no choice.
School thankfully went virtual, so I was still employed. But now, since it was distance learning and all my side gigs had paused, I suddenly had all the time in the world to do things I had been putting off, and little by little, a lot of unexpected things started falling into place.
For the longest time I kept this to myself because I knew a lot of folks were struggling, but enough time has passed now that I think I can share.
During the pandemic:
• My cousins and I actually became closer through Zoom calls and new text threads.
• Jey and I got married.
• Ouchii unexpectedly took off because of the masks I designed.
• I started Ouchii Fitness online to help people stay in shape, which paid me more than any gym ever had.
• I bought a new car.
• Jey and I bought our first house.
• I got my baby boy corgi Archie.
• I got certifications to become a personal trainer and group fitness coach.
• I got promoted at Crunch and became a group fitness manager for the first time.
Each of those bullet points deserves a blog post all on its own, and maybe in due time they’ll get one.
But as I reflect on the pandemic — something that was inherently awful and scary — it is wild to me that all those blessings found their way into my life.
I’d like to think some of that was due to a higher power, but I also have to give myself some credit too. I’ve always been a hustler, and for once I finally had time to sit still and focus that energy.
So with that, I have two takeaways from the pandemic:
- Blessings can come at the most unexpected times.
- Sometimes life forces you to stop because you were never going to stop on your own.
And sometimes, when everything goes quiet, you finally hear where you were supposed to go next.
Ouchii Fitness online classes.
A pandemic wedding with a 1/4 of the guests. And no, we were not supposed to be indoors and we were supposed to have masks on during this specific window of time.