Packing Up Life

Packing up life, ya'll.

Here's the thing about packing up life:

For the past 11 months, I have been perfectly content and otherwise successful with nearly all of my life's collection of stuff still sealed in boxes of various size and description. I can't say that I am permanently beholden to being a nomad for the rest of my life, but I will say that being a minimalist has a number of profound advantages.

Of course, minimalism and utilitarianism go hand in hand. I am particularly beholden to the philosophy of taking no more than I need, owning little more than I actually wear, and being as low-maintenance as the daughter of my mother can possibly be in this life.

It helps that I am highly phobic of clutter. Highly. Clutter makes me terribly claustrophobic. It brings out my latent OCD tendencies, and it's not so pretty, It also helps that I don't do anything in excess. As an academic, the majority of my life's collection of stuff are books and paper files, but I can't make excuses or apologies for that. Yes, I own a lot of books, but it's really not to excess. I just happen to love books. And one day, all of my books that I have lugged back and forth across the world will happily sit in my office/library. Minimalism, is, after all, a state of affairs for the highly transient. One day, and I promise you this, I will settle down.

But for now I must spin. I'm tying up loose ends. Trying not to lose my mind or patience by just focusing and doing one task at a time. At the moment, the mountain feels endless. A week from now, I will spend my last weekend here with my friends before coming back East for another few days of relaxed celebrations before I leave town.

Packing, moving and leaving the country for a year. God, I'm flipping crazy.