With reflection, I would say that the biggest surprise so far in preparing for my trip has been learning that getting rid of one's belongings isn't as difficult as imagined to be. After making the decision to leave, my books sat all untouched for weeks, physical manifistations of my reluctance to change. These were the "best of the best", already culled down from the move from Seattle a year ago. The Nick Hornby catalogue sat still in a perfect row, ordered not by publication date, but in order read. High Fidelity, read on the flight to Ireland with a dear friend years ago. It has the distinction of making me envious of other people's failed relationships (as opposed to my general lack thereof). About a Boy, read in one sitting while holed up in a cat-piss infested room on some hellish mistake of a visit to Oregon and the step-mother. Next to the Hornbys, the tiny, embarrassing Metrosexual handbook sat as a reminder; a joke of a gift from a girl met in Costa Rica and with whom I spent two random and unforgettable weeks with.
Slowly though, each book wound its way into other friend's homes or the bookshelves of faceless neighbors. For as long as it took for me to give up the books, its surprising that today I don't really think about them. The memories persist; the physical books themselves, well I guess they acted as a trophy of sorts to the mere accomplishment of having read them. As I consider the next items to go, this will serve as a useful reminder that nothing is ever as hard as one imagines its going to be. Keep your memories, give away your trophies.
That being said, it doesn't mean I'm not going to hold onto my HDTV until the last possible second.
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