Moving Day One: 59 Sleeps to Go

It’s a little weird dans Chez Steff this evening. Christmas is in boxes. Dust outlines litter the bookshelves where formerly-laid-objects have been hijacked and packed.
Total disarray. Promising disarray, but chaos no less.
I have decided to pack as much as I can, as early as I can. The thinking? Make myself live as minimally as possible for the next 7 weeks until the move. When I move, it’ll be the first time in 6 weeks I’ve seen a lot of this stuff. Maybe my thinking will be more removed and objective on what actually comes back into my home.
I’d like to be the “Less is More” type in every way except in space. Ideally: I get a place that’s 1,000 square feet or so. That’d be 50% more than now. I’ve seen a couple listings I’d kill your grandmother to get.
I’d love a spacious home, and would be willing to live a little more off the beaten path for the right place. I have some really nice stuff. To me, anyhow. I don’t want to pare down much more than I have. I like my mix of cool and retro, quaint and quirky. I think I’m rocking it, and I want to keep it. If it’s junk, it’s going. If it’s not, here’s hoping I get at least 750 square feeet.
Otherwise, I’m paring.
Well, anyhow.
The reality’s kicking in. I’ve got boxes now. In this old armoire of mine, I’ve crammed 4 boxes. Soon, I’d like there to be 12 in there.
Bits and pieces of my life, boom, there it is. Bits and pieces of dead peoples’ lives too. And live ones, besides me. Lotsa bitsa lives.
That’s what the bookshelves are for me. Repositories of life. Mementoes. Books, of course. Things others have made for me, photos of loved ones, weird little things that meant something to me and to no one else. Like that one solitary blue marble.
The story behind the one itty-bitty blue marble that’s sat conspicuously on the bookshelf since 2006?
I cycled Southwest Marine Drive after a blowout with a boyfriend. Things were getting weird and I would soon be nearly off my nut with estrogen poisoning and a bad experiment with “period supression.” I wrote in my journal that I was “losing my marbles” and was going for a bike ride in the hopes of clearing my head after said fight.
I rode toward UBC, stopped at a late summer fruit stand on the roadside, and while I was buying my Okanagan cherries, glanced down to see the marble beside my foot.
It seemed like a “sign” that I might lose my marbles but I’m also likely to pick some up along the way, and I should just chill and enjoy the ride ‘cos it all sorts out in the end.
After that came intermittent moments of chill and crazy, but at least I occasionally found my marble. Today it’s in my change bin.
Those kinds of things are fun. I keep mementoes from stuff like that.
Now these things will be increasingly hiding in boxes until I’ve flipped the script on my life. Then, they’ll come out and there’ll be an all-new context.
I start looking at the bare shelves and packed boxes, and I get a panic attack twinge. “Oh, shit. I’m actually doing this. Whoa.” And then I settle down.
Because, most of the time, I’m all antsy and LET’S FUCKING DO THIS! NOW! NOW! Move it, people!
It’s like I wanna put a freeze on today’s Craigslist, stiff my landlord, and move tomorrow. When I decide what I want, I want it now. But the world doesn’t work that way.
Besides, I’m a smart introspective grownup. I’ll get more out of this if it takes a couple months and I throw myself into the mix.
I don’t know. It’s a weird headspace. I’m thrilled I’ve got a good head start on moving. I’ll have all my tech to put together this weekend. No more packing then. Toys!
But it’ll be good to process it all a bit, too.
Moving is sort of embracing the future but also confronting the past. There’s a crossover time when it’s forward-and-backward thinking.
I love that kind of stuff. I live for it. But it’s not like I move often. Who knows then next I’ll have this in-between time? I’m milking it.
But right now I’m sneezing up a storm, thanks to kicking up long-dormant dust and firing up allergies. So much for the romanticism.
PSST: HAPPY NEW YEAR, PEOPLE.