1-3-12 letting go

stick with her, she takes a bit to warm up

Deana messaged me yesterday evening about what will be our second annual ski trip. With passes to Monarch saving us about $100 each on lift tickets, we're down to picking a weekend and making it happen.

To be completely honest, I was figuring the ski opportunity would come up and I was a little afraid of it. I remember too well the complete lack of control I had on those contraptions, the fear of hurtling into a tree, the falling, and my stars, the difficulty of getting up. I remember being exhausted at the end of the first run, although, to be fair, it had been three hours... I wasn't sure my quads weren't going to burst into flame before we got to the take-off-your-skis point. I remember thinking, "well, I can at least say I did it once" and never again. 

But like anything worth enjoying, this takes practice. 

And it takes a letting go of fear. 

I'm not good at letting go. Of anything. Control is a very sexy word to me, in all contexts. 

(I also think the obsession with photography is very intimately connected with this personality characteristic.)

But I knew, when asked, that I would go. Out-of-control if need be, fear or not, I would go.

This morning, though, I came across Amy's talk. And something akin to excitement, even of being out of control, started to creep in.

And that happened a few hours after I'd come to the decision that I am not stepping on the scale again this year. Yup. You heard it here first. There will be no weight check in 2012.

And that's part of the more basic need to learn to let go, of fear mostly, but also of letting a number -- a number that fluctuates drastically depending on the time of day and month -- control me. If I work out relentlessly for a month and the scale doesn't budge, it does nothing to motivate me to keep going. And even when it does budge, when it climbs back up a pound, or three, or five, in a day or a week later, it becomes another negative obsession. It doesn't tell any part of the story I'm interested in telling.

So I'm done with it. And I'm done being afraid of failing. Or falling. Or hurting. 

Because all of those things will happen. That's life. It's also love. But it's only a small part of either.  Fearing them, or trying to control them, does nothing to enlarge the bigger part, the part that is the core of my life and hopefully, moreso now than ever before, also the "limbs and outward flourishes."