Reflections on Getting Rid of Most of My Stuff
Whilst traveling about in Argentina, Tracy and I talked once or twice about what the living arrangement would be when I came back to the states to be with her from Denver. Perhaps I’d get my own apartment, perhaps I’d crash at her place and enjoy floater status for a few weeks while we felt out what would best work, perhaps I’d outright move in with her (our engagement which soon followed provided a nice context for this last option).
Whatever it would be, the joke was that all I needed to do to completely move in with her was walk into her apartment while wearing my big ol’ traveler’s backpack.
What freedom.
And that’s not even counting the emotional freedom of not having to worry about the maintenance/storage/protection associated with clinging to my stuff.
The real, longer-term beauty of the situation is that my time in Argentina showed me how truly little of my stuff was necessary to be fully functional, productive and happy. I can now choose what’s actually important to me because the situation decided for me what is not. I mean, if I haven’t missed it by now… I haven’t even yet plugged in my desktop computer: turns out I can work just fine without jumbo, dual monitor action, and for it every wi-fi enabled nook of this fine city can serve as my office.
The ultimate reassurance? If a given item is really that important I can always pull something comparable back out from the Craigslist/secondhand ether into which it was placed.