I mean, honestly. How are you supposed to fight when you have all of your weapons on you? (I do not have all of my weapons on me.)

My husband plays a lot of video games. Sometimes, if I’m very hungover, I will watch him play them. (It’s been years since I’ve been that hung over.) One of the things that always irked me is that your playable character can be running around, carrying a sword or whatever, and nothing else, and then he gets to a certain type of foe that he must defeat and just goes to another screen and switches out his weapon. Sometimes you run out of ‘room’ and have to discard some before you pick up another, but still. The character is always ‘carrying’ a goddamn weapon’s chest of shit with him or her or them.

You cannot realistically carry all of those things.

Perhaps that’s part of the appeal.

I’ve written in previous entries about how I have changed careers frequently. Life is short and I don’t want to regret not trying something that I’m passionate about when I get to the end. Some people have one passion that carries them through their entire lives, or maybe a good amount of decades. I find that I’ve had many, and it’s not so much that I lose interest completely in a certain path that I’ve been passionate about, it’s more that something else will burn brighter or that the one aspect has burned for too long, too hot, and it’s burnt out.

Fighting was great fun. I’m so glad I did it. I’m okay not doing it right now.

I used to feel a huge identity crisis and/or guilt when a new interest started overshadowing something that I’ve worked so hard on for so long. Even more so when I had given everything I had to something and it had completely burned me out. I’ve gotten over that, for the most part. I can always go back to those things and visit them. And even if I don’t, I don’t have any regrets about never trying them in the first place.

The hard part for me is letting go completely.

Like many people, the pandemic reshaped my life. After a decade of teaching, I’m no longer a full time fitness instructor/personal trainer. I don’t regret this. I love my new job and feel incredibly blessed to be able to do something so fun, with such a great team of people, from home. I still teach classes most weekday mornings before work. It keeps me on a schedule and keeps me moving. But I no longer get that panic feeling when less people show up. I no longer freak out about my class being changed or canceled, and I no longer agonize over subbing out a class if I need to because that’s a chunk of change that will seriously affect my budget.

Like a lot of service-oriented jobs, I don’t think most people realize how much work goes into becoming a certified instructor/trainer and how much time and money is spent even after you’ve earned your certification on continuing education and workshops to keep your certifications. After a decade, I have many, many certifications.

This week I watched one of them expire.

Me two year ago after I had passed the test for the certification that just expired. (In case you’re asking yourself, yes, that is an extra large pour.)

It wasn’t a certification that ever earned me a ton of money, but the test was brutal and studying for it was intense. I could have paid for and crammed in the additional continuing ed that I needed for it, but then there was also the hundreds of dollars it would take to recertify. Money that this certification would not make back for me. For the past couple of months, I’ve been getting emails from the fitness organization that I hold the cert under, warning me that my certification was about to expire and telling me what I needed to do about it. The emails got more frequent and intense the closer it got to the deadline. Extolling the virtues of the certification, offering some free continuing ed, letting me know where my money goes, etc. Not doing something was a challenge.

Could I afford the renewal? Yes. Could I have carved out time to get the continuing ed? Yes. Do I enjoy continuing education generally? Yes. I honestly enjoy learning stuff. Even refreshing things that I’ve learned before. So why didn’t I reup?

Because I would then be going through this same thing again in another two years.

I learned long ago that effort expended does not necessarily justify more effort expended. Sometimes you just have to be proud of the work you’ve done, know that you gave it your all, and let it go.

(Psst. This is also true for relationships that aren’t working out.)

I still have several certifications that are viable. The ‘big’ ones are good until 2024, thanks to all of the continuing ed that I did over the pandemic. By then I’ll know whether I still intend to use them.

When I was working my way up to my black belt, everytime you were awarded a new belt, your instructor would tie your old one into a knot. You were never supposed to untie them. It was symbolic of locking in the knowledge that you gained while you wore that particular belt. We used to joke about going and untying each other’s white belts so we’d completely forget how to throw a punch properly, etc.

All of the knowledge that I gained is still there. Just because my certificate isn’t current doesn’t mean it’s wiped from my brain. No one’s going in and untying my virtual belts. And most of all, I don’t regret taking that journey.

It’s hard, but it’s time to let go and say goodbye.

I can only hold so many things at once.

You can only hold so much. Knowing when to let go.