My name is Tim Pahuta, I’m 33 years old and live in Denver, Colorado.
Following college I played 9 years of professional baseball, eight in the Washington Nationals organization. My career peaked in Double-A, Harrisburg, PA, where I spent two and a half seasons.
I retired from baseball when I was 30 and, although I have a communications degree from Seton Hall University in NJ, I felt lost. Success in baseball was my life, my passion and my drive for a very, very long time.
I landed a position as a Regional Sales Manager through a family friend and I commenced my typical American life of doing a job that I wasn’t passionate about in order to make a whole lot of money and buy myself some happiness…
As many of you already know, that doesn’t work. I ended up depressed, void of self-esteem but filled with a growing desire for something better. Something bigger.
Just because baseball didn’t work out as I planned when I was six years old, was my life over? My dream died, did I die? Did my spirit die, my will, my drive??
Perhaps a bit melodramatic, but four months ago it didn’t seem that way.
I was angry, stressed, hostile, tense, irritable, harsh and unkind. My happiness, a fleeting idea of the past. Did it ever really exist? Was I ever really happy?
My only regret about my baseball career is that I didn’t enjoy it as much as I should have. People tell me all the time about how great it is to have played minor league baseball and make it as far as I did… I agree with this now but for the last two years it was a dead dream and I was stuck selling lights. I was a failure in my eyes, doomed to “regular” life, an idea that left me feeling uninspired. What is my motivation?
On May 28th, my best friends birthday, I was having a rough day. Stressed as usual, my phone ringing and buzzing with calls and emails, one problem after another. A life of never ending problems, focused always on the negative. During a meeting with a coworker, an ugly altercation on my part and perhaps a bit of an overreaction on her part, left me doing some serious self-reflection about the road I was on and where I was heading. I officially didn’t like myself anymore- I had gone from professional athlete to lighting salesman angrily confronting coworkers. Enough was indeed enough.
On May 31st, three days after the altercation that broke the camel’s back, I turned in my rent check at my Los Angeles apartment and told my landlord it would be my last 30 days.
For the past five months I have been figuring out who I am.
I’m strong, passionate, able, intelligent and funny. I’m a helper, genuinely concerned with others well-being and dedicated to making lives better.
Over the past year I have totally reinvented myself in the vision of my mind’s eye, becoming who I want to be, MY path. I’m fit, in the best shape of my life, far better than when I was a professional athlete. I wake up everyday with drive, with passion, with desire and energy!
My forays into baseball and lighting simply a training ground for my real passion, becoming a Health Coach. Through Health Coaching I plan to improve people’s live’s by helping them find their true passion, their drive, meet none else’s goals but their own.
While I admit it’s drastically different than the norm and it may not look like a typical “adult” way to spend my time- I mean, my skateboard is my primary mode of transportation…. I’m Health Coach Pahooter and I’m happy.
Life Navigation 