JoAnn vs JoAnn

I was in L.A. this weekend with my BFFitWWW. We had an amazing time–that’s a-whole-nother post–but it ended on a blonde note. I didn’t realize that I had lost my wallet until I had already checked in for my flight, got my luggage tagged, and had to show my ID. I’m thinking I lost it in Beverly Hills earlier that morning.

After much ado with the very nice and very helpful TSA folk at LAX (who knew??!), I made it on my flight, adrenaline pumping, stomach clenched from lack of food and sleep, and I realize–oh crap, I forgot a bag at the hotel.

These events were preceded by an incredibly stressful July, near implosion / breakdown in August, and sprains/injuries in September. WTH?! My little mind starts whirring, churning through the possible meaning of all these calamitous events. (Yes, I realize I might be exaggerating a tad but ‘calamitous’ is such a great word!)

I decide it’s because 40 is a yakudoshi year and perhaps the Japanese were onto something. After some amount of research though, I discover that 33 (Eastern/lunar) / 32 (Western/Roman) is one of the big daiyakudoshi years for women. I kind of like Jay Sakashita’s take on it though: “…yakudoshi marks a critical stage in adulthood where the opportunity for a person to fully realize his or her potential in life is most available.”

But it doesn’t explain the build-up of icky leading to my 40th birthday. Kristanne suggests that the L.A. losses could be attributed to a lack of focus and reminded me about Thich Nhat Hanh telling us to give it more space and to be mindful. (Um, yea. I may have slept through some of his speech we saw on Saturday, so I may have missed those parts. I know, the irony… )

In my search to find out what other pithy things Thich Nhat Hanh has said, I found this quote that perhaps is eerily germane to my recent loss of ID (identity) and to the icky I’ve been going through: “Live your daily life in a way that you never lose yourself. When you are carried away with your worries, fears, cravings, anger, and desire, you run away from yourself and you lose yourself. The practice is always to go back to oneself.”

I think one of the most surprising things that occurred was the first thing that my manager at Harris County Flood Control asked upon seeing me today. He asked, “So, did you find yourself?” I’d been toying already with the idea of how close “losing my ID” and “losing my identity” was and had even thought how funny it was that not a single one of my friends had made some joke about that. The fact that the question came from this man I don’t spend much time with or know very well made it all that more poignant.

I’m tired but have had too much caffeine to nap or come to conclusions that are meaningful to anyone but me. I guess the lesson of being 39-almost-40 is that I need to slow down, be mindful, take advantage of this opportunity to “unite the disparate parts of [my] life,” and never lose my ID in LA-LA land. And, to answer the question, while I think I may have found parts of myself, my sense of ’self’, my definition of ’self’ is always changing.