Before the Road: Downsizing to the (Tangible) Essentials

This is not a particularly reflective post, but that’s okay, I tell myself. Not everything is going to be exploding with beauty and insight. In fact, that’s not why most people will be interested in this journey and in the book I intend to write, the book I will write. It’s also more relatable if I don’t try so hard.

So for those of you who are reading this and wondering where the last week and change have taken me, I’ll do my best to recount it in the coming posts. But before I dive into that first day of the trip and during the first week, which took me to the greatest number of places in the shortest amount of time—and, by that superficial measure, is the most diverse and interesting part of the journey so far— there are a few other things to share, starting with how I felt in the process of packing up and saying goodbye to the people and places that defined my life for the last nine-ish years.

The last few weeks have been an unraveling of my last nearly-nine years. Boxing up books, giving away clothing, selling furniture, forced to consider what was necessary and what was accessory for the year ahead. The nice handbags, certain medals, the cookbooks, certain coffee mugs, and bicycle went to the people who would care for them best or to whom I wanted to. The furniture, old and used, was sold on Craiglist, almost-scammed on OfferUp, and eventually junked by a disposal company. Then there was everything else I owned. Which was a lot.

Nearly every night in the run-up to the big move, I was stressed and in tears in my attempts to downsize. My boyfriend wondered why I was so worked up, what I found so painful and difficult about just throwing things away. “You just don’t understand,” I thought, contemplating our difference in age, the number of apartments in which I’d lived in comparison to him, the number of years I had to accumulate stuff in each of those apartments, all of which leading up to this moment of eschewing apartments and leases and steady home bases for the foreseeable future.

Perhaps he didn’t understand. Then again, this was hard for him in a completely different way that I didn’t understand. I was leaving the place I lived for the last third of my life. He was leaving the place where he’d lived for his entire life.

I had attached a lot of sentimental meaning to the things on the walls, in the drawers, and on scattered bits of notebook paper. Going through them, one by one, categorizing and deciding their fate—store, trash, donate, sell, gift—was a brutal exercise. What if I wanted to wear that dress again? What if I wanted to see my business school Leadership Communications syllabus while writing about something related to my MBA in the book? What if I needed that winter coat for an impromptu trip to Tahoe or Breckenridge on a later day in this adventure?

In my MBA and my career that followed it, I became excellent at thinking in disciplined, data-driven, and binary terms. Do the project or do not do the project. Examine the expected value in cost and return on money and time. Don’t think about sunk cost. Don’t think about whim or feelings. Lead with reason. Be decisive.

The kind of decision-making I do effortlessly in my day job does not carry over into my life as an artist, martial or otherwise. My jiu-jitsu is hesitant, paralyzed by indecisiveness and over-analysis, lacking pressure, insistence, assertiveness, and fearlessness. My writing is mercurial, subject to stereotypical whims: it flows freely one day, and it clams up the next. Without the focus of a competition registration or the pressure to publish on a deadline, I struggle to make decisions. I also don’t get paid to train jiu-jitsu or write—maybe I’d approach both of these crafts differently if I got paid for them.

Similarly, the downsizing exercise was rife with indecision until the deadline loomed so nearly that I could no longer avoid a decision. If I didn’t call a shot, everything was going into the garbage. But at the time, everything I owned seemed to be significant for one reason or another.

April 2 arrived, and with it, our final trip to the storage locker.

I cried when I boxed and taped up the final bundle of things I thought were significant enough to put into storage, among them, a wooden sign saying, “Will this matter a year from now?” and a framed piece of artwork with a quotation from A.A. Milne, the author of Winnie the Pooh: “Promise me you will always remember you are braver than you believe and smarter than you think.” The former was bought on a walk in the South End with a beloved friend from graduate school. The latter was a gift from my college therapist, who remains the best therapist I ever had.

With a little more space, those two blocks of wood might have come with me.

If you were to ask me in March how many of my belongings were ornamental and how much of them were essential, I’d have said almost everything was essential. But once they were transported into the unit and locked away, I could hardly remember what was in there. So were they really essential?

Even now, as I write this two weeks later, I am trying to recall what is in that storage locker and remember what I’m paying to preserve in that 10 x 5 x 5 unit full of boxes. There are a bunch of books, some shoes, some artwork, cards from friends, notes to self, and articles of clothing with sentimental value. But I’m already beginning to forget the rest.

It begs the question, if the whole place caught on fire tomorrow, what would I wish I’d saved from it? The honors society induction speech from my deceased high school English teacher? The birthday cards I write to myself every year? The gi in which I won Masters Worlds?

It will be interesting to see how I feel on my first return to that unit, whatever it may be, whether it’s to take an item out of the box for the continuing journey or to empty the unit entirely at journey’s end.

Regardless, the difference between what I would want to bring versus what I need to bring has defined itself as follows: what I need is encompassed within a Subaru Forester with a jenga-esque configuration of two office work backpacks, one bag of toiletries, one bag for technology, one bin of kitchen items, one bin of jiu-jitsu training apparel, one bin for shoes, one bin each for our non-jiu-jitsu clothing, and one bundle of stuff for the dog.

That’s the list of the tangible, at least. There’s also “the cloud” and the intangible thoughts, wishes, and dreams carried in mind and heart. But that’s for contemplating on another day.