Do What You Love

Hi, my name is Jonathann Richardson, and I haven’t written anything in a very long time. I believe you should always do what you love. If there’s that one thing you’ve been dying to do, do it! This life is too short to not do things that make you happy. This may be a corny saying, but “everybody dies but not everybody lives.”

One year ago I was serving in a local restaurant. If you’ve ever worked in the food service industry, you know the money can be very beneficial. It definitely was for me, a 23-year-old college student at the time. Late June, I found out that the owner of the restaurant was closing down... the next day. I was about to go into my final semester of college pursuing my Bacehlor’s Degree in Exercise Science. The bad news of the restaurant was initially looked at as an unfortunate event. I was jobless. I had not yet secured an intern site. I wasn’t even looking honestly. By the way, the final semester of my college course pathway required that I complete a 500 hour unpaid internship to graduate. A few short weeks after the restaurant closed, I landed an intern position at a Healthplex two hours away from where I was currently living and attending college. While looking for places to live, I found that an old friend from high school owned a house in that city. He allowed me to live with him and pay the cheapest rent I had ever had during college. The same day I got hired at my internship site, I also walked into Ruth’s Chris Steak House and landed a job there too! Suddenly my life turned completely around from a few weeks before that.

I’m going to stop boring you with all the details. Long story short, I graduated in December. I continued to work at Ruth’s Chris. If any of you know what that is, you can imagine the money I was making as a server/bartender. However, I decided that that is not something I want to do for the rest of my life. I also couldn't see myself personal training or anything else in the field of my degree. I thought I could, but the internship opened my eyes to it. I originally pursued it because I love fitness and always have. I’ve played soccer since I was 4-years-old, and I played in college too. However, personal training just wasn’t for me. As much as I love helping someone get fit, I can never make someone share the love for it that I do. When I was shadowing personal trainers during my internship, they would always have clients who would miss and come up with excuses. I’ve even had friends who want to train with me and ask for help. Just like the clients, my friends would eventually give up too. The bottom line was they will just never love it the way that I do, and I never want to feel like they don’t because I’ve failed them. So I just decided I don’t want to do it.

I have always loved videography. Video is a language. We all speak it. We all understand the scenes in the movies that have zero dialogue. Looking back, I’ve always wanted to create video. My Instagram was filled with amateur videos of my workouts or small edits of them with music. January of this year while making a lot of money, I bought some camera gear for fun. I made a video edit of me and my friend’s workout, and the video got tons of positive feedback. A few short months later I dropped everything and moved to New Orleans and have currently been pursuing Freelance Videography. If you’re reading this, please take a few short moments to check out my work on my Instagram page. @rich_homiejon is my username. There is also a link to one of my favorites at the best gym in the New Orleans area. I’ve been training there for six months now. I’ve hit massive personal records there, and all of the members support me each and every day with not only my gym efforts but my career as well. I created the above video to showcase all of the amazing people in my gym family!