It’s going to be spotty these next few days. Tradition dictates I neglect you for a post in any given month, two at most, but we are headed for even higher rates of abandonment. Someone once told me the amount of blogging time is inversely related to doing big, important adult things, and there’s certainly some truth to this. Even the free moments I used to lavish on frivolities like television and video games have been redirected to my move to Dallas, so you know it’s serious. The difference with this site, though, is it doesn’t exist as a vanity piece or a vehicle to deliver some poignant message. It exists because I get noticeably dumber if I don’t write regularly. And me don’t want that, you could say.
Moves like these, well, they suck as much as they excite. Nothing really prepares you sufficiently for them–not friendly advice, not your liberal arts education, not even your past experiences. There is a strange sinking-slash-thrilling feeling that strikes occasionally, like you’re peering into a cliff. No single task on your list is necessarily rocket science. But the sheer volume overwhelms, and the only approach you can take is to tackle one thing at a time. It’s like you’re laboring over your own pointillist painting, committing to one dot after the other, and then stepping back to reveal something spectacular.
I’ve got a few of these dots on canvas, but there is more blank than color right now. But that’s fine! That’s fine. All I can do is look to the next dot, which is Chicago. Sunday. Both feet off the edge. A return to a city steeped in memories, paved with the promise of new ones, and wrapped in a cold that will not compromise.
On my drive back to Charlotte, as wave after wave of torrential rain pounded the cabin of my U-Haul, I asked myself why, precisely, this exact series of events had to transpire like so. The mandate was simple enough: clear out a storage unit, bring the wares back to Charlotte, and then eBay the shit out of the stuff in preparation for my move to Dallas. In place of a lazy summer drive, however, was an utterly harrowing passage, thick with fog, rain like fat darts, a slow-moving trail of blinking hazards stretching to the horizon.
I paid close attention to my mirrors, to be sure, and then, in a wholly natural reaction to the situation, I framed the experience as another chapter in my hero’s journey. Indeed, I had a clear picture of the person I am and the person I’d like to be, and this trial was simply the price of admission to span the divide. The trip concluded without incident, and I’ve developed a deep appreciation for how professional movers contend with limited visibility and mileage-per-gallon well below 10.
The selling itself still needs to be tackled, but that’s going to have to take a back seat. There is a fresh hurdle to negotiate this week, namely clothes shopping. My business casual wardrobe requires substantial updating by Saturday, and that means new dress shirts. I never understood the ceremony with the packaging–a mangled wreck of paper, plastic, and pins–but the cuffs on one of the shirts particularly confounded me. French cuffs, they’re called, and duly so because after about three minutes, it was like, I surrender. Where the hell did the buttons go? Do people even still make cuff links? This was basically the Mongolian barbecue of shirts, where you’re paying a premium for a partially assembled product. You win, shirt. I’m waving a white flag tomorrow in the shape of a sales receipt.
Secondhand Rants will return on Tuesday, September 03.