Gut Check

I threw in the towel somewhere between singleness and busyness.

I guess it was too many nights Chez Moi with Tony Soprano and Crane Lake and the growing list of obligations in my day planner.

Somehow my priorities shifted and my distractions intensified, and I kind of stopped caring about how I looked. I took a break from the gym, my make-up bag and I grew my hair out.

All that long hair led to an endless supply of hair clips and rubber bands and bobby pins - and the growing neglect of my flat iron, curling iron and hot rollers. It wasn't always pretty, that mass of blonde and copper streaked hair - tied up in a messy knot on the top of my head. Sometimes I looked more like a librarian (not the naughty kind) than I did a Swingin' Single.

I had to take matters into my own hands Saturday.

Okay, that's not entirely true. It was all my stylist's doing.

I threw my dirty hair into a pony tail and made it to the salon with time to spare. I was nervous and yet anxious about the supposed metamorphosis I was about to undergo. My long mane had become a safety net of sorts - a gossamer veil I could hide behind and use to conceal my potential. My uptight buns were a weapon that helped me hide from suggestive flirtation and putting myself out there.

And sometimes it's just easier to avoid the mess and the games and the insecurities of putting yourself out there.

Complacency - that's another element in this scenario. I think I came to accept certain assumptions I made about the world. Plainly said, I think I came to accept the possibility that I'll be single for the rest of my life.

Likely not, in all honesty, but sometimes that's how it feels when your place card is perennially assigned to the Sans Date table.

And then I shook the kaleidoscope. You know - the same sparkly pieces are in the picture, but they're all in a different place and I like the scene a lot better. I'm comfortable with my universe, I'm okay with the here and now and am even more excited about the tomorrow.

I joined a gym.

I cut off more than six inches of my hair.

And I've rediscovered some of the old tricks in make-up bag.

This could be fun.