NOT KEEPING SCORE

It’s interesting what a trip to the gym will bring.

My membership to Equinox in San Francisco is about to expire as I move out of SF and head up north.

I’m rather sad to be letting my gym go – I’ve come to love the overpriced, posh luxury of it… funny the things we become attached to.

In the locker room the other day, I stepped gently onto the scale to weigh myself. But the bar was stubborn and refused to balance.

That’s when I realized they had changed out the scale for a metric one.

Now, maybe I was absent the day they taught conversion rates, but forgive me that I don’t know how many pounds 57 kilograms is. My only thought was Is this supposed to make me feel skinnier somehow?

Because the truth is, a pound by any other name, is still a pound.

* * *

When in the process of moving, I decided to be very Zen-Golden-Monkey-Buddha and just get rid of nearly everything I own. It was test: Toss everything that is not
1) an overtly important sentimental item or gift (Grandma’s opal ring),
2) absolutely necessary for the next stage in life (glasses)
3) something I know I’ll instantly regret if it goes (favorite pair of tennis shoes) and
4) books (books have life-pass exemption from purging).

I figured I’ve been doing so well with all this good-bye and rejection and letting go of late that this would be easy.

Or so I thought.

Today I was carting off boxes and boxes of my funky fashionista thrift wardrobe and sassy city apartment accoutrements, feeling very Zen indeed, when I hit a snag – what is this? My punky black and white kitten heels? Why, I can’t get rid of those! What if I go to Spain this spring? They would be perfect for prancing around Barcelona…Oh! And this loose lime linen top. What if I’m back in Vietnam this summer? I’ll surely need something cool for ‘Nam.

And that was just the closet.

There were old pieces of writing, pictures, Post-it notes of faded brilliance, pathetic symbolic items like that half-chewed pencil I gnawed on — you remember that? I said to myself, Yeah, that was really something. I can’t throw that out. Gotta keep that pencil to remind me of how nervous I was that one time that one thing happened that one night right before that really special day…yeah.

…Yeah.

You get the picture: all the crap we keep around, the things we become attached to but don’t need. But not just things! We remain attached to people that no longer serve to teach us things, places we no longer occupy, ideas whose time have past, and images, like outgrown clothes, that no longer fit us.

As I‘ve been forced to realize how thick my attachment to all the silly material items I own, I’ve also come to see I’m mighty attached to some images as well: being defined as Sassy City Dweller, Corporate SmartAss, Jet Setter, Proficient Doer, Accomplished Daughter, Young Creative Type, Independent Fema-Bachelorette etc. They are easy roles for me to slip on, and I realize that I have become just as attached to these definitions of self as I have to my complete set of matching flatware.

But I have had to go through each one and think about what I really need for the next stage of my life – does it fit into one of the four categories above? Maybe Corporate SmartAss Shannon Edition™ has served her purpose and, like my 24 set of cocktail glasses, it’s time to leave her on the streets of San Francisco with a FREE sign.

I can always go back to IKEA if I need another.

Because we often define who we are by what we do. And in the past few weeks, do you know what I’ve done? Who I’ve been?

Well… I’m moving from SF (there goes Sassy City Dweller) and in with my parents (Accomplished Daughter? Oops…); I don’t work and have certainly not left the Bay Area (nix Corporate SmartAss and Jet Setter); I haven’t really written anything except for a couple of blog entries (Young Creative Type? Proficient Doer? Pah!); I’ve kinda, sorta, maybe, tangentially—er, um, depends on how you define it, begun casually kinda, kinda, kinda “dating” this guy (or, as I tell myself so I don’t have to take as many anxiety pills to get over the emotional intimacy fear: just “semi-regularly getting naked with the same person” – so there goes my self image as fiercely Independent Fema-Bachelorette) and I basically see friends and… “hang out.”

“Hang out”!?

Hanging out was not on my To Do list. And yet, neither was being content… and there both are.

I was very, very attached to something indeed. And it was an image of someone who would not, could not, let go of any of these images. It was someone who would always be ambitious, self-sufficient, strong, independent – and if that ran the risk of seeming aggressive, intimidating, loud, abrasive – so be it. Better than weak, needy, passive, stagnant, unaccomplished, boring.

But I’m finding that image unnecessary, and just like it doesn’t matter if you label in pounds or kilos, you still weigh the same amount, it doesn’t matter how we label ourselves, we’re still… ourselves.

And in fact, those labels that we become attached to can become just as burdensome as any other kind of baggage – it’s hard to move through life when you’ve got boxes of emotional attachments to haul around. Purge, purge, purge, baby.

So as I move out of the TenderNobb and make my way on up to Sonoma County and into 2007, I’m working on stepping up onto a different scale, and checking for an easier kind of balance—same girl, just slightly different definitions, slightly different numbers.

All I’m having to do is let go of a few things I don’t need…

(Wishing everyone a balanced New Year! Happy 2007 ~)

-Shannon