Possessions

In the face of a new adventure that is allowing me to nearly start over again I have been reflecting on possessions. I've quickly been letting go of most of mine. Strangely it has been fairly easy to do and I have been able to successfully reduce my entire worldly possessions down to my 2006 Nissan Sentra, the contents that would fit inside of it, my custom built Planet X Kaffenback bike on the over-the-trunk-rack, and two boxes shipped via UPS. That is all. Everything I own. Well, materially speaking which I have come to recognize this week is really not the important stuff I own at all. Instead, I think our memories and life adventures are far more important possessions. As I was discarding, recycling and donating stuff this past week leading up to the big pack yesterday I would come across items that would jolt a memory of an amazing time I had in my life. And this happened over and over again. I don't really need anything as long as I have my friends, family and good times. Which is precisely why I am moving to the west coast to get back in touch with those things - particularly the friends and family part. Not to say that the offloading of things was entirely easy. There were a few moments where I freaked out wondering if I was being careless with the way I was letting go of stuff. I am taking a sort of leap of faith that I will be able to put a comfortable life back together when I arrive in Seattle. I don't make a fortune and as much as I would love to be Buddha-like with no attachments I will, indeed, need things to make my new apartment livable.  So was it really that smart to sell all of my furniture and donate a shit load more stuff? The air mattress is getting old fast and I know I am going to be itching to get a bed right away upon arrival. And yesterday, when my dad arrived to help me with the move I was at peak stress level as I was playing a game of Tetris with my remaining stuff and the trunk of my car! By the time the process was over I had ended up donating nearly all of my kitchen stuff because it wouldn't fit and it was going to cost as much to ship it as replacing it with new stuff. But it got done and I am pretty proud I did it all by myself with just a tad bit of help from Dad with loading the stuff that needed to go to donation. Bruin (my Boston Terrier) is pretty stoked to be done with the process too as he slept like a baby last night. I think he finally believes he will not be abandoned.
Tomorrow begins the big move west. Herndon, VA to South Bend, IN is the goal. I'll post again tomorrow and keep you all abreast of the happenings of the trip.

PS - I forgot to grab a picture of my empty apartment but here is my sad looking cubicle that I left in DC too.

Is This Real?

Yesterday was a long and exhausting day that exponentially increased my stress level beyond the already high level that I am generally comfortable with on a regular basis. I woke up early to have a productive Sunday in preparation for the big road trip that is the first part of my move to Seattle. I had a potential buyer coming to see the dresser for sale and another confirmed buyer that wanted my desk. I made myself some coffee and got to it - rearranging my entire apartment and taking everything out of closets, cupboards, and the storage unit space. After selling the dresser I began to take apart my lovely desk which only irritated me more as it was a pain in the ass to take apart in large part due to the huge pieces of glass that sit on top of the wood. And to add insult to injury this buyer - my only interested buyer in my desk - was only paying me $120 for the desk that originally cost me over $700. That hurt. But it is what it is and I cannot take it with me in my tiny Nissan so I justified in my mind that $120 is more than $0 so apart the desk came. It was about that time that I started to survey what was left because at this point I only have my bed and TV stand remaining of the things I wanted to sell. Everything else left in the apartment either needs to fit in the Sentra or needs to be donated. And wow, that is when I started to freak out. I have a lot of shit. When I originally came up with this plan to just sell my furniture and fit my life back into my Nissan for the move I thought it would be fairly easy because I had done it before. When I moved from Tallahassee, FL to Baltimore, MD for my first permanent job with my agency I had arrived to Baltimore with just my car and my belongings packed inside. So clearly I could do this again. I somehow forget to include in that equation that 4 1/2 years has passed since that time and I have acquired significantly more possessions. Somehow I am going to make this work. So I allowed myself to freak out a bit and then I had a beer. It is the Davis way anyhow. My father arrived to help me move the desk to the guy's house that was buying it and then the rest of the day was spent grabbing some food, talking through the remaining tasks, and organizing more of my house into piles. I figured I might end up needing to ship a few boxes of things too because I just don't know if it is all going to fit. Remind me not to move across the country ever again. I am not leaving the west coast once I get there. Today I hope the people that wanted to bed are coming to take that away from me and I get to enjoy air-mattress sleeping a week earlier than I was thinking but a sale is a sale. I also hope to offload the TV stand and donate even more stuff to Goodwill. I am also thinking I am going to start to pack items that I don't need access to this week and get a better feel for what I have to work with. Oh the joys of moving...

The Backstory

I got to this place that I am at today - with respect to juxtaposition of my career and geographic relocation - by way of an adventure that began in January 2004. Really, it all began in January of 2003. See in January of 2003 I was tearfully saying goodbye to some really good friends, a lifestyle, and on some levels a nightmare that was my life as a personal assistant to an at-best-b-list-celebrity in Los Angeles, CA. I loved to hate what I had become over those two years living it up through a non-stop series of uninhibited youthful Hollywood nights. On one hand I had come into my own, developed a great group of friends - many of which I still consider my best - and was living a life I could never have imagined for myself that was the very opposite of my upbringing. But I had also found myself with complicated emotional baggage, mixed up priorities, and a false sense of purpose so I had to make a change and moved back to San Diego. Unfortunately that move only compounded much of what I was trying to run away from in LaLa land and sent my on a dizzying spin down a very confused path. As a matter of illustration: In a matter of a few short months I single-handedly, that is to say at my own fault, lost the friendship of my best friend, my sister, my roommates, my co-workers, and nearly everyone else around me. This was going to require some sort of dramatic change to jolt me out of my funk. So I joined AmeriCorps. The two years I spent serving in AmeriCorps could warrant their own blog so I'll skip those stories for now (it is however, in AmeriCorps that someone said to me that I should write a blog or book someday because I had some interesting stories). Fast forward 3 years to December 2006 and I was moving from Tallahassee, FL (where I had wandered to after AmeriCorps) to Baltimore, MD to take a full-time permanent position with the federal agency that is responsible for AmeriCorps. Over the next four years I would repeatedly say I was trying to get back to the west coast where I belonged but nothing ever seemed to work out. I was easily distracted with a developing career that was rewarding me with amazing experiences both personally and professionally. But after 3 jobs within the agency I have finally landed the one that lets me get back to the west coast and still have a pretty kick ass job. But enough about work because that is one of the things I am trying to get away from in DC - the over dependence on resume recitations that pass as a form of human bonding. I still do not understand that energy here. But I digress. So here I am, ready to move to Seattle, WA in just one week for a new chapter and adventure in my life. Stay tuned for what is sure to be an interesting journey of nothing in particular.

And so it begins

I have wanted to start a blog for some time now but could never really find a time to get started. And frankly, I didn't believe I had much to say either. But when I recently decided to fulfill a 7 year stated goal of moving back west, a co-worker suggested I blog about the move and upcoming road trip. I thought this is the perfect time to start blogging. I'll begin with the week leading up to the road trip, include the entire adventure across the country and then settle into regular rants and raves about nothing in particular. So here it begins.