Emptying Boxes
Well, the DC Project is real now. I sent resumes to two contacts in DC last week and received positive responses from both, and Ladan has begun selling furniture in Phoenix in preparation for our eventual move. I flew back to Arizona Thursday night and I'm here until Monday when I fly to Huntsville.
There's something palpably sad about seeing our apartment here with furniture missing. This part of our lives, when we were supposed to both live here in Phoenix for a year or two, is now over without ever having really happened.
I spent a good chunk of the day going through boxes of my accumulated stuff and trying to let go of as much of it as possible - so that I don't turn into one of those old packrats whose stuff eventually gets unloaded on antiques stores or simply trashed. Since graduating college, I've kept the vast majority of my textbooks, notes, exams, and projects. Even though I've known for years now that I would not be making a lifelong career out of aerospace engineering - I discovered too late that my love for aircraft didn't translate very well into love for the actual engineering underlying it all - I kept all my papers around for two reasons: one, just in case I ever somehow needed some of that information, and two, because I felt that after all that effort (and money) invested, throwing it all away would be like ... well, throwing it all away.
When we moved out of San Francisco, we paid a lot of money to have most of our possessions shipped to Phoenix. After the move, with more time on our hands, I went through all of it and realized that there were many boxes full of mostly papers that I just didn't need. One day I tossed out a stack of papers more than waist-high that had filled three heavy boxes. At that point I resolved to strive to significantly decrease the amount of random unnecessary stuff that I allowed myself to collect.
But until today, I hadn't had much impetus to actually start the trimming. Now that we're starting to think of the logistics of moving to DC, though, I was determined to rid myself of as much stuff as possible. I started with my college class notes and although it was painful, I threw out about 99% of it - hundreds, maybe thousands, of pages of printed and hand-written notes, class handouts, exams, and labs, dating back to around 1996. What a strange feeling it was to wade through these papers again; it was like fast-forwarding through five or six years of my college career, bringing back so many memories of those times. I can't believe I knew all those equations back then! It's amazing how little of what you learn actually gets used in the real world. Sure, it all lays the theoretical groundwork for doing the real thing, but man ... I could've learned the entirety of the engineering knowledge required for my current job in a single intensive semester.
Also getting the axe were about ten textbooks that I've now listed on Amazon; an entire box of spare computer parts: cables, connectors, fans, power cords, floppy and IDE cables, empty CD cases, and phone cords; a stack of old game manuals (about a third of my total collection, ones that I finally admitted to myself don't need to be held onto any longer); almost half of the papers in my apparently poorly-regulated Really Important Papers box; another box (the second) full of newly-emptied binders; a pile of old airplane pictures and posters that haven't been touched in years; and, in a stunning example of material liberation, all the many heavy wood panels that comprise my cludged-together computer desk/cockpit which has since been replaced by a single high desk from Ikea and a deck lounge chair.
Robert DeNiro's line in Heat advising to "never have anything in your life that you can't walk out on in 30 seconds" has always appealed to me, although I usually interpret it in a different context, in terms of material possessions. Those who know me would probably find that ironic, considering that I, for example, have held onto every computer game box that I've acquired since about 1998. But I like the idea of having few critical possessions - more accurately, I like the idea of being comfortable with having few critical possessions. It would seem wonderfully liberating to pack all my most important items into just a few boxes if I decided to say, move to another country tomorrow.
In reality, though, I know that things actually do mean a great deal to me, primarily music albums, books, and tangible links to the past like pictures. Their worth comes not from my mere ownership of them, but because of the enjoyment I derive from them over time. And while I feel that I'm getting better at not accumulating too many things, I've still got a long way to go to reach my ideal of just a few boxes' worth.
There's something palpably sad about seeing our apartment here with furniture missing. This part of our lives, when we were supposed to both live here in Phoenix for a year or two, is now over without ever having really happened.
I spent a good chunk of the day going through boxes of my accumulated stuff and trying to let go of as much of it as possible - so that I don't turn into one of those old packrats whose stuff eventually gets unloaded on antiques stores or simply trashed. Since graduating college, I've kept the vast majority of my textbooks, notes, exams, and projects. Even though I've known for years now that I would not be making a lifelong career out of aerospace engineering - I discovered too late that my love for aircraft didn't translate very well into love for the actual engineering underlying it all - I kept all my papers around for two reasons: one, just in case I ever somehow needed some of that information, and two, because I felt that after all that effort (and money) invested, throwing it all away would be like ... well, throwing it all away.
When we moved out of San Francisco, we paid a lot of money to have most of our possessions shipped to Phoenix. After the move, with more time on our hands, I went through all of it and realized that there were many boxes full of mostly papers that I just didn't need. One day I tossed out a stack of papers more than waist-high that had filled three heavy boxes. At that point I resolved to strive to significantly decrease the amount of random unnecessary stuff that I allowed myself to collect.
But until today, I hadn't had much impetus to actually start the trimming. Now that we're starting to think of the logistics of moving to DC, though, I was determined to rid myself of as much stuff as possible. I started with my college class notes and although it was painful, I threw out about 99% of it - hundreds, maybe thousands, of pages of printed and hand-written notes, class handouts, exams, and labs, dating back to around 1996. What a strange feeling it was to wade through these papers again; it was like fast-forwarding through five or six years of my college career, bringing back so many memories of those times. I can't believe I knew all those equations back then! It's amazing how little of what you learn actually gets used in the real world. Sure, it all lays the theoretical groundwork for doing the real thing, but man ... I could've learned the entirety of the engineering knowledge required for my current job in a single intensive semester.
Also getting the axe were about ten textbooks that I've now listed on Amazon; an entire box of spare computer parts: cables, connectors, fans, power cords, floppy and IDE cables, empty CD cases, and phone cords; a stack of old game manuals (about a third of my total collection, ones that I finally admitted to myself don't need to be held onto any longer); almost half of the papers in my apparently poorly-regulated Really Important Papers box; another box (the second) full of newly-emptied binders; a pile of old airplane pictures and posters that haven't been touched in years; and, in a stunning example of material liberation, all the many heavy wood panels that comprise my cludged-together computer desk/cockpit which has since been replaced by a single high desk from Ikea and a deck lounge chair.
Robert DeNiro's line in Heat advising to "never have anything in your life that you can't walk out on in 30 seconds" has always appealed to me, although I usually interpret it in a different context, in terms of material possessions. Those who know me would probably find that ironic, considering that I, for example, have held onto every computer game box that I've acquired since about 1998. But I like the idea of having few critical possessions - more accurately, I like the idea of being comfortable with having few critical possessions. It would seem wonderfully liberating to pack all my most important items into just a few boxes if I decided to say, move to another country tomorrow.
In reality, though, I know that things actually do mean a great deal to me, primarily music albums, books, and tangible links to the past like pictures. Their worth comes not from my mere ownership of them, but because of the enjoyment I derive from them over time. And while I feel that I'm getting better at not accumulating too many things, I've still got a long way to go to reach my ideal of just a few boxes' worth.
posted by GregP at 12:43 AM
2 Comments:
I just wanted to say that this is some of you best writing since the blog was started. Coming from a pitifully amateur blogger/writer and fellow pack rat. :)
Hey, thanks, I appreciate it! I really am trying to improve my writing, and no matter how many times I read a post before publishing it, I'm never completely satisfied. But maybe I am getting better.
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