Moving day is here. T-minus 11 hours and I pick up the keys to the new place (we now know to where.) It’s only 8 miles from here, and it feels like worlds away. It’s super cute. There’s an apple tree in the backyard and a ‘Harry Potter’ room under the staircase (it has stairs!).
Packing up and moving from this rectangle of a bungalow plopped on a square piece of bare land took that planetary snow-globe-shake-up I was telling you about. It was a shock to my system because for the 9.5 years living here, I’ve been composting. A long, slow, painful, process of break-down happening at a cellular level, until my life was no longer recognizable as mine. Painful because all I wanted to do was grow. To quickly water the seeds planted in me. And yet there I was composting. Turning into a non-descript blob of mushy nothingness. Because that’s what feeds the seeds.
So when it was time for that compost to be stirred, to check if the dirt was mushy enough, that stirring and shaking was rough.
It stirred and it shaked, and as the snow-flakes in the snow-globe landed, all I wanted to do was say, f-ck it. Follow this wild abandon of letting it all go. Of chucking it all, packing a bag, and just walking into the sunset, not knowing what tomorrow will bring.
I’m craving travelling light. To not be so weighed down by physical things. Like the old-school writing desk I got 3 years ago that I lovingly painted ‘Cushion White’ with a surprise inside when you open it; a splash of Annie Sloan’s ‘Capri Pink’. The writing desk that I spent more time salivating over the color combo as it rests up against my ‘Oceans Deep’ statement wall, than actually sitting down and writing at it.
It’s beautiful, it’s symbolic, but it doesn’t fit in my backpack. And fact is, I write better sitting under a tree.
I packed the first car-load of stuff this evening with my neighbor, shut the trunk, and thought, ‘Yeah, I can do this. This car full of stuff is enough.’
There’s still a house full of more stuff to shed, but it felt good to just notice where the seeds are sprouting, some leaves unfolding.
My friend Sammi started a Substack recently and I’ve been eating it up. It’s speaking to my soul. It’s about simple. Less is more. Getting really clear on what actually feeds you. Letting the rest go. And doing that with style. She’s in the middle of a move too, down-sizing more than me, and is pointing to the possibility of sprouting a way of life that is richly beautiful and spacious, even without all the stuff.
I’m sitting here (actually at that writing desk) contemplating that perhaps moves are always happening for us. Sometimes it’s the obvious seismic-uproot-walk-into-the sunset type move. Sometimes the more subtle cabbage-leaf-turned-dirt type moves with each day looking pretty much like the other, until one day you wake up and there is no longer any sign of the cabbage leaf, just a pile of dirt.. They each come in their own time. Serve their own purpose.
I hated living here for 9.5 years. OK maybe not hated it. Maybe more like, really resisted it and wished I was somewhere quirkier, quieter, sunnier, drier most of the time. But more than the rectangle of a house and bare piece of land (that turned to mud in the rain) I resisted the composting. I resisted the process of decay, of turning into someone that’s unrecognizable compared to the someone who first stepped through this door.
That person feels like a ghost. She haunts me sometimes, wanting to be brought back to life. But in her place is someone more familiar. Someone I’m starting to enjoy moving in with. Someone that’s starting to feel like home. That someone is Me.
And so tomorrow, even though I have more than a back-pack of stuff I’m taking with me, maybe I can still travel lighter. Less burdened by my ghosts and who I think I need to be. More at home with who I am, wherever I fall asleep. Maybe I can still walk into the sunset each day, not knowing what tomorrow will bring. Trusting tomorrow has what it needs to feed those seeds. Trusting it will take me closer home to Me.