Life is seasonal. And trust us when we say, seasons can change in an instant. 

2023 was the year of reinvesting in Aspen and building our business. It was the year of further education, growing our amazing community and being more vocal about who we are and what we stand for. It was the year of podcasts, blog posts, events and workshops. We were going to sign a 5-year lease extension on the Mount Hawthorn premise and convert the back of the gym into a recovery centre complete with an ice bath and a sauna. It was the year we made a statement and expanded. That was the plan anyway… 

But the best made plans often go to waste and 2023 ended up being the year we closed our doors and downsized our operation. So what happened?

First of all life, quite literally, happened. Emma fell pregnant. We found out about it a whopping 6 days into the magic of 2023! 

While we always knew we wanted more kids, we didn’t think this would be the year for it. As mentioned we need to grow the business and become more stable before biting off that challenge. Kids was the blueprint for 2024… 

The first few months of the year we convinced ourselves we could do it all. If anything the impending child further motivated us to make shit happen. We were motivated. We had a non-negotiable deadline. We would make this work. 

The second thing that happened in 2023 is that death visited the family. And with it came a new found respect for time and a new appreciation of the word sacrifice. 

Glenn’s Grandmother, Mary, passed away in April in what were, for us, eye-opening circumstances. I don’t know if you’re aware of how the final years of a person’s life are funded but often it involves their assets being sold, the proceeds of the sale being held by the retirement home and the cost of care being withdrawn from those proceeds until they pass away. Whatever is left over is then shared with the family. 

In short the average person works their arse off, missing out on the golden years only to have their home, their biggest asset, finance their eventual demise. Something about that did not sit well with us. But we’ll come to that in a minute. 

While all this was going on around him Lockie, our son, was coming along in leaps and bounds. I know this is not an uncommon sentiment but being a parent has given both of us more joy than we can possibly explain. The love, the devotion, the little changes that only you get to truly notice or appreciate. It really is heaven on earth.

And how quickly it changes. In as a little as a day we will notice his language completely upgrade. New words, comprehension of grammar, expression of feelings, understanding of others. And not to mention the motor skills… watching this kid learn to jump and climb and ride his bike has been a joy. Observing his imagination at work and how he role plays animals and characters is beautiful. Maybe because we are both so invested in observing how humans learn and develop this chapter of parenthood seems to have come with extra perks for us. We have learned more about human movement and witnessed a lot of theory in action in the last 2 years with Lockie than we have in all our previous study.

 

One common theme of being a parent is how often an older person will stop and comment on how much they enjoyed their kids when they were little. Not that they don’t love them now but there is something special about the bond when they are young. The love and the devotion is unparalleled. Don’t take it for granted – it’s over before you know it.

Blink and you will miss it.

On the flip side of that kids never really remember what it was like for their parents to be their whole world. We can almost always remember the combative teenage years, or the late 20’s/early 30’s when your parents become relevant to you again. Perhaps that’s what makes these early years so magic. When watching your children grow you become aware of just how lucky you were to have parents. And you get reminded of just how amazing life is in its simplicity.

Which brings us back to the idea of sacrifice and saving for the later years. Its common for people to sacrifice their kids younger years trying to juggle careers and being a new parent. Its common for people to sacrifice their time for some form of financial security with the adage that they will get to enjoy it later in life. If Grandma Mary’s death taught us anything its that maybe we are sacrificing the wrong thing.  Running a business is a juggling act. Being a parent is a juggling act. For us its started to seem crazy to sacrifice what we have now with our kids for anything.

The pressure, the commitments, the time and energy that our current life was taking, and the thought of a newborn in the mix, began to weigh on us. We sat down and got real with the season of life that was upon us.

Often the timeline can’t be shifted. However, the choices we fill our time with can be.

 

So with all of this in mind, we decided to not look back with regret, we decided to not blink. We decided that a business can be rebuilt but these precious times cannot.

Deciding to not renew Aspen’s lease in Mt Hawthorn was so tough. It’s honestly the hardest decision we have made. Glenn and I combated each other and countered every point with a possible theoretical solution. We cried. We argued. We changed our mind a hundred times but we couldn’t reconcile our new perspective and our new priorities with our initial goals for the business. 

The season for us had changed and we had to respect that.

Throughout all the discussions about how to handle the future, there is one thing that never wavered. Our passion for learning, moving the body and sharing that with others is not in question. We want that more than ever.

With the closure of 116 Hobart St, brings a whole host of new opportunity. Our snow globe has been shaken up and we get to make some changes and influence where things fall.

Providing 30+ Movement Classes per week 30-40 hours of private coaching certainly is one way of servicing people and getting out there what we wanted to share. But was it the most effective way?

During this down-time, we are hoping to find an answer to that. looking to create new services, ways of operating, that allow for a deeper and more comprehensive learning experience.

Maybe that will look like intensive weekend or day sessions. Maybe it will be 6 month mentorships. Maybe it will be online. Maybe it will be one on one. Maybe it will be in groups. We are not sure but we are certainly working on it.