All is well because the artifice of material security has been broken down and boxed up. I feel so much lighter! The apartment keys have been turned in, and right now all I’ve got is a carry-on suitcase, a cup of coffee, and a bottle of sparkling water in my immediate surroundings. I’m done. All of my crap is now headed to a future address that will incite a brown paper rainstorm that I’ll be dealing with likely through the end of the year. But I don’t want to think about unpacking right now.  Not when I just bid everything goodbye.

I know it’s a bit melodramatic to get all Shakespeare about this move, but I keep thinking about the line from King Lear: “the wonder is, he hath endured so long.”  Living up in a high rise has been no real hardship (especially with my killer view), but the past three years up on the eleventh floor has not exactly been in line with my personality. I’m no eager building dweller, but I will say that this place has been handy for storing a lot of things that I didn’t know I still had.

And writing about moving is almost as painful as the act of moving itself. It’s like I’m showing you an insufferable vacation slideshow and you are subtly looking just beyond the computer screen and wondering if there is any Guinness left in the fridge. Or maybe that’s just me. I love you all, but I don’t ever want to see your vacation photos.  I will understand if you stop reading right here.

It takes a village to move Megan’s crap, and in this case, I was able to rely upon friends and family who saw me through the entire painful evolution. Having wonderful people like I’ve got is critical as a single person with a tendency to live her life like a magpie when we’re talking organization. People came over, organized my crap, and I did whatever they told me to do as we went along. I have to give my brother credit for suggesting that I store my purse and all of other important shit in the fridge once the movers showed up. Nothing critical got accidentally packed up! I think. Time will tell on that one.

I didn’t have tons of time to linger on random keepsakes, but as I moved my stuff into piles and tried to get it ready for the movers, I did discover a fair amount of memorabilia that I had not seen in three years.  If you haven’t looked at something since you last moved, the big emotional question becomes, do you really need it?  Probably not– but it’s hard to let go of some things. While some stuff I chose to keep (like this International Student ID card, complete with a photo that I developed in my old black and white darkroom), other things, I opted to throw away.

Here’s a small sampling of other things I evaluated:

This is a metro card from Singapore. You know when I last rode that thing? Like, 2008.  Sure I may have about 10 Sing dollars left on here, but why am I still carting this around, in some vague hope that I’ll suddenly find myself back there, sober, and able to easily retrieve this stupid card? If I’m still in the Navy when that moment arrives, the odds are not looking good that the stars will align. The metro pass went in the trash.

Race bibs and medals. I just don’t know what to do with these things. I ran the races, and it’s not like they are serving any useful purpose. My friends will roll their eyes, but I am not a huge fan of acquiring a lot of sentimental crap. I opted to hold onto the medals and pitch the bibs.  If I get really sad, I can click to some of the old blog entries located here, here and here.

Like I mentioned, my brother came down to help — fresh from a hockey tournament in Canada no less! I’m starting to lose track of how many moves he has helped me with, but in this iteration he managed to carry an old desk on his head and chuck it into the massive skip sitting next to the loading bay. The desk had some, shall we say, negative sentimental value, so I was grateful for his brute strength in moving it out of my life. Here he is hydrating using a “cup” he found in my kitchen after assuming that I had no glasses left in the apartment. I opened the cabinet and showed him a complete collection still clean and ready for use. He drank from this thing anyway. Boys.

How long should you hold on to old planners, calendars and agendas? I’m kinda starting to think that you shouldn’t bother at all. Everything seems to reside on the Internet these days, whether we like to accept it or not. I found this planner jammed into an empty soow container. Why do I have an old yogurt container from Senegal?  Can I blame the last people who packed me out in Dakar? Probably not. But the thing has sat in a closet for the past three years. Super useful.

Both the planner and the yogurt container also went into the trash. I did, however, allow the movers to pack up last year’s wall calendar that held important trips and photos of various independent bookshops in Brooklyn. I look forward to throwing that out in another three years.

Even older than the International Student ID card, this is the French-English dictionary I bought when I lived in Grenoble circa 1993.  I opened the front cover and noted that I had listed the phone numbers of every single place I lived during that year. I’m sure this made perfect sense at the time.  I opted to keep the dictionary– even though I know that wordreference.com is a far better resource. Maybe I’ll let this one go during the next pack-out.

Okay, I’m sick of talking about my stuff and you are sick of reading about it. My sprawling square footage looked decidedly huge once it all went away. I was more than ready to turn it back over to the building people.

Like I said when I started, the view from here hasn’t been terrible– but I’ve had more than my share of Air Force over the past couple of years, and like every good military person, I’m itchy to go after three years.  Time to leave this to someone else’s burden of material possessions. (Sensitive Air Force people please note: I love you guys too– I’m just seeing if you’re paying attention)

So as they don’t say in the UK, on y va. I’m excited for whatever’s next, and I know that I’m going to be slicing through this box in no time at all. The good news is that I have no doubt that my new place will undoubtedly be located next to a decent watering hole.  You’re more than welcome to come over and help me unpack.