So much crap

One more box.

I thought I was getting better at moving. I've tried to mature, to not try to squeeze out every last corner of my luggage, or still be sending things off hours before my plane leaves. Where I used to fly with two large suitcases everywhere (plus carry on plus backpack), I now make sure to fly with one large suitcase and one medium-sized bag (plus carry on plus backpack). When I moved my stuff into storage in DC a year ago, I did it all by myself, emptying out my whole apartment over a week and a half piece by piece on handtrucks and carts two blocks down to the storage facility. Impressive, but utterly ludicrous. So when I moved stuff back out of storage at the beginning of the year, I hired a moving company. Couple hundred dollars perfectly well spent.

But in terms of moving moving, like packing up all my shit and moving, I seem to be stuck somewhere between puberty and college. I have now sent boxes out in three batches, each one meant to be the last. Six boxes out on Friday, four more over the weekend, and three today. That I once--as in, four days ago--thought six boxes would be enough to get seven years of crap from the US to Hong Kong and Australia is appalling, just ridiculous. And there would be even more boxes if it weren't for a very generous friend who is keeping some of that crap for me for when I come back to take the bar.

The scale of my underestimation is so ginormous, for someone so experienced in moving, that you might as well have had me lease an exploding oil rig in the Gulf and pretend that the ruptured well was something closer to a leaky faucet rather than the biggest environmental disastercatastropheclusterfuck this side of the Industrial Revolution. I just thought I was better than this. I'm supposed to be the wily veteran of moving, able to draw cheap fouls and flop and get in the other team's head. The last few days has exposed me for the overconfident rookie I really am. Knowing what I know now, I thought I should've been the kind of person who said, look, I've got a ton of crap, so let me just accept from the beginning that I'm going to need to ship out 15 to 20 boxes.

But no. Instead, after shipping out six and then four and then three, and stuffing my one large suitcase and one medium-sized bag (plus carry on plus backpack) so that their seams are leaving stretchmarks, there sits next to me a small pile of books and just more crap that will need to go in one. More. Freaking. Box. I will send it out sometime tomorrow morning. My flight is at six in the afternoon. And so here I am, it's (well past) 3 a.m. I must be lonely, squeezing out every last corner of my luggage, still sending things off hours before my plane leaves.

Never again.