1. Create a motivation and a deadline. Sell or rent your house, buy a non-refundable one-way airline ticket to Bulgaria, etc. Do not skip this step!
2. Clear some time on your schedule. More time that you think.
Continue readingWe’ve been selling and giving away our things for over a year now, and we’re almost done. The renters for our now too-big house will be here soon, and the few possessions we have left will fit into a small storage container.
Continue readingWe’re giving away our things, and it’s taking time.
So much time.
My travel partner turned to me recently on one of our long walks and asked,
“So, why do you want to travel?”
Continue readingMany thanks to No Side Bar for publishing my piece today on the beliefs I’m uncovering (and letting go) as I unload possessions.
And, let’s admire this lovely empty closet. Beautiful, right?
I tell everyone that I’m not teaching anymore so my husband and I can travel. That is absolutely true, and it is also true that I’m not teaching so I can have more time to write and read. Travel, reading, writing: the triumvirate for happiness. This puts travel writing–such as this collection of essays with a great title by Joan Frank–squarely in my happy place.
The plan is to travel. Our children are grown, and we’re coming up to our last day of working full time. To get out there, we’re renting out this house and unloading its contents, ready to step into the next season of our lives with lighter luggage.
So, we must deal with things.
I walk through the rooms of our suburban house and inventory the objects, organize them into stacks, plot their disbursement. Sometimes, in a burst, I’ll unload a great deal at once. Sometimes, objects persist.
For example, this gargoyle.
We wanted someplace quiet on a recent weekend, so we headed for Thomas, West Virginia, a former coal-mining community that’s now finding a second life as a low-key retreat in the mountains.
Justin and I went to Fredericksburg, Virginia on a beautiful fall day a couple of weeks ago.
I fell in love.
Fellow traveler, there can be a lot of small nuisances on our journeys, but dangling straps from your backpack does not have to be one of them. Travelers trade home comforts for the joy of the journey, so the things in that bag–and the bag itself–take on outsized importance.
Continue reading