Tuesday, November 26, 2013

In another lifetime, or really just a few months ago, I would’ve traced the contours of my responsibilities thusly: marketer first, who moonlights as a blogger. Nowadays, I primarily move product on eBay, moonlight as a marketer at irregular intervals throughout the day, and once in a while, on days my fucked-up calendar deems prodigious, I write a little bit. Moving sucks. I’ve been commiserating with the Professor regularly on the topic, and now that he’s off to Dallas, I’m the last man standing, left to ruminate on my wares and the fundamental paradox–that this move is necessitated by the new gig, and yet the moving itself regularly thwarts my attempts at focusing on said gig.

Bit by bit, lot by lot, I’m getting there. I’ve hawked more than, like, a thousand DVDs, and I’m not even exaggerating. They’re a distant memory now, and I suppose this is what the good episodes of Hoarders feel like. The sense of freedom I’m supposed to experience has been muted by the final hurdle, however: a few hundred games I must sell. I’ve got it down to a science now: gather the goods. Photograph them. Write the listing. Field any questions. Ship. Replenish my packing supplies and AA batteries when needed. I’ve learned useful things, too, like how to optimize my camera settings to extend battery life, or how weight and geography, rather than the dimensions of a given package, matter most to UPS.

Meanwhile, seemingly improbably, all the other pieces of the move are falling into place. Dining set’s sold and moved out. Ancient issues of the New Yorker were deposited at the landfill, with The Atlantic Monthly and Harper’s Weekly to follow suit. Direct deposit’s in place. Gentle Giant’s coming by on the 10^th to collect my furniture. Cleaning crew is scheduled for the 14^th, armed with eco-friendly, fully biodegradable products that are pet- and baby-safe. Back in August, the prospect of leaving Charlotte was gutwrenching. Now, I want nothing but, and I’ve lashed myself wholeheartedly to this enterprise, with the grim hope that necessity and momentum will keelhaul me straight through the finish line.

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Secondhand Rants will return on Tuesday, November 26.

Thursday, November 14, 2013

Lancaster Highway, by all rights, should be just another one-lane backroad in south Charlotte. It’s lined with neighborhoods until it’s not–to the tune of a dive bar, a gas station, a mulch farm, and a full-fledged waste treatment plant that occasionally blankets the aforementioned neighborhoods in a rank shitcloud. Traffic is especially terrible during rush hour, a phenomenon only magnified by its limited throughput. It’s a road even die-hard bikers avoid.

But the thoroughfare is special to me because I seem to find myself on it during key junctures throughout my tenure in Charlotte. I remember tearing down it during an interview trip, gas tank near empty, and then pulling into the Shell with a sigh of relief. I remember tearing down it in a frenzied rush to the mall parking lot, early one evening, in search of a VPN key fob from the job made possible by that same interview. More recently, I remember dropping off a U-Haul truck one foggy morning. And tonight, after shipping eight huge boxes of DVDs and dropping my dining set off at Cheshire’s, I drove down it feeling just a little bit freer.

For a moment, I caught a glimpse of the faraway shore I’m trying to reach. There’s still so much to do, but all of it must be done. I don’t know why this was heartening, too, but I realized I had brought this series of events upon myself. There was a clear fork in the road, and I chose a path. The road not taken never completely left the picture, though, and I’ve been seeing a lot of old friends lately. On one hand it’s nice, but also strangely stressful because you feel like two different people. I’ve got to reach that shore–become that new person, whole, lighter than air.