I've been moving for most of my life. My parents moved when I was a kid, then I moved to study, then work, then moved again as leases ran out, either salaries or rents went up, found rats nesting in the kitchen, got married...
I thought the mother of all moves was in 2014 when I packed up a life, a wife, a baby and a country to fly nine thousand miles to a new continent.
Hah.
Here we are again, and this one's the biggest yet, because we're packing it all up this time. Last time we came, brimming with relo assistance $$ and confidence, living out of 4 bags. This time, it's going to be a 20-foot container and everything is coming along.
When you buy decent stuff, it shows. I happily gave away all my campaign equipment in 2014 because it was, frankly, worn out crap. What I have now is still crap, but it's better and pristine-new crap.
When you buy decent stuff, there's a color scheme. For example, all black furniture.
Little gewgaws like a hook to hang the headphones.
Bags and pouches and boxes and cases.
Enough extension cords and boards to reach the moon and light it up, too.
There's also a sense of sadness - not in the detritus of finding things long thought lost and now useless, but in finding new, never-used things acquired on hope and dream, now looking at a future of gathering dust in a storage box. Snow boots. mittens. snow chains. carpet cleaner. jogging jacket. all the things Bombay will never offer an opportunity to use.
But at the same time, there's also the determination that rides on a deeply-banked substratum of anger - mine. Why should I abandon what I want just because of circumstance? This life was mine to make of it what I wanted - what gives anyone else the right to take those things away?
Interestingly, even here, there's a purge. As things start getting boxed up, drifts of plastic, labels, packaging, and all kinds of junk starts appearing magically - all the things you never knew having or getting.
Some things never change, I guess.
I thought the mother of all moves was in 2014 when I packed up a life, a wife, a baby and a country to fly nine thousand miles to a new continent.
Hah.
Here we are again, and this one's the biggest yet, because we're packing it all up this time. Last time we came, brimming with relo assistance $$ and confidence, living out of 4 bags. This time, it's going to be a 20-foot container and everything is coming along.
When you buy decent stuff, it shows. I happily gave away all my campaign equipment in 2014 because it was, frankly, worn out crap. What I have now is still crap, but it's better and pristine-new crap.
When you buy decent stuff, there's a color scheme. For example, all black furniture.
Little gewgaws like a hook to hang the headphones.
Bags and pouches and boxes and cases.
Enough extension cords and boards to reach the moon and light it up, too.
There's also a sense of sadness - not in the detritus of finding things long thought lost and now useless, but in finding new, never-used things acquired on hope and dream, now looking at a future of gathering dust in a storage box. Snow boots. mittens. snow chains. carpet cleaner. jogging jacket. all the things Bombay will never offer an opportunity to use.
But at the same time, there's also the determination that rides on a deeply-banked substratum of anger - mine. Why should I abandon what I want just because of circumstance? This life was mine to make of it what I wanted - what gives anyone else the right to take those things away?
Interestingly, even here, there's a purge. As things start getting boxed up, drifts of plastic, labels, packaging, and all kinds of junk starts appearing magically - all the things you never knew having or getting.
Some things never change, I guess.