CHECKING IN {BY SAYEH!} 6 Jun 2012

 

As a long time subscriber to Gmail, it has become a custom of mine to search my inbox for the emails I sent and received exactly 1 year to the very day I am sitting at my computer (and sometimes even 2 or 3 years back). Usually, the results are hilarious. A girlfriend forwarding along a message from her crush at the time with the subject line: This Man Exceeds All My Expectations! (The man in question didn’t exceed expectations for long. I’m pretty sure he lives in his car somewhere outside of Portland, Oregon now.) Or, my mother telling me I look beautiful in my recent pictures on FB, but am I wearing the (5th pair) of Spanx she sent me in the mail. I look great of course; she’s just asking.

But this week, in doing my customary search for what was happening in my life at this point in 2011, I came across some very different kinds of emails. At this time last year, I had just broken up with my boyfriend of 2.5 years, and was in the process of moving out of his house. If you’ve never been in this situation, it’s awful even under the most amicable of circumstances, which mine certainly were. All of a sudden, I was an unwanted guest in a house I had previously considered my own. I was overstaying my welcome, and despite having a few, generous weeks to move out, I could hear the echo of an impatient, tapping foot reverberating in my brain.

My inbox was flooded with frantic emails to so many different Craigslist posts inquiring about apartments, corresponding with friends of friends who needed a roommate. The search seemed like it would never come to an end, and I felt like a vagabond with no place to go. I remember thinking to myself: How is this my life? I’m in my 30s now. Considering moving into a 494 sq. foot studio that smells like kitty litter is NOT where I thought I’d be at this point.

I don’t only relive this kind of stuff in email, either. I make the trip down memory lane in other ways too. I go through my FB albums with terrible puns as names like: 2008 is Gr8t! (New Years. Natch.) And then of course, there’s my closet. A veritable archive of my life. Different styles, trends of the day...and of course all my different sizes. The tiny tube top I wore in college (one day I’ll pair it with a cool blazer that I don’t own yet, and it will be awesome, I swear), and the much less tiny pair of jeans I wore shortly after college.

It seems like a torturous undertaking, to relive the past like this, but for me, I think my Gmail vision quests and closet cleanouts are just part of a checking-in process. I find myself consistently shocked when I look at the date and realize how quickly life seems to be passing me by. So, I think it’s my way of taking a moment to look at a snapshot in time--an email, a picture, an outfit--so that I can actually see all that’s happened or not happened after a stretch of time.

So this check-in, a year after those angsty emails, I find that although much has changed--I’m happily settled in an airy, light loft in Fishtown--other things have happily stayed the same. Lithe, for example hasn’t changed at all. Yes, perhaps I’m not going 5-6 times a week every week, like I was this time last year, but I’m certainly close most of the time. When I look at a picture of myself from a few months ago, I’m not burying my face in my hands from the shock at how much my weight has fluctuated in such a short amount of time. Something that was standard before. And although I struggle to stay motivated at times, or make poor choices that make the swimsuit I wore just after the challenge last year, seem a little daunting to try on, I no longer feel that I have a mountain to climb to get back to a place that my closet or my pictures or my emails remind me I was.

So although my inbox search put me right back in the moment, where I could feel the anxiety I felt last year, in the pit of my stomach--a body memory of the tense, awful weeks that were June 2011. They also showed me that the things I thought were so awful and stressful at the time, I’ve all but forgotten today. A true lesson in perspective. And what I do remember are all the classes I have signed up for, and all the emails between friends coordinating getting to the studio together. And here I am, a year later, still at it.

That’s certainly something worth looking back at and forward to.

See you in class!

Image of Lither, Sayeh Hormozi wearing Lithe via Dom

Comments

[MT Soltis]

Sayeh - I so look forward to Wednesdays just to read your posts. You never disappoint. I'm a big fan of the check in process. I usually do it at New Years - it's amazing how much happens in a year. Congrats on all that you are!

[Sayeh]

Thank you MT. You are always so supportive of me and my writing. It means the world. It truly does.

[Ilysa]

Another great post. I love all of your posts and especially the more personal ones bc I can always relate so well. Thank you!!

[Lauren Boggi Goldenberg]

LOVE this and I love seeing your progress : ) Can't believe it has been a year!

[Paria]

Love this post! And not just cuz u referenced me! ;). Although I'm not gonna lie...I secretly like it. I was just telling Leah not two hours ago that I feel like my life is flashing before my eyes. So crazy. Miss u.