Leaving a Life

SIXTY-SIX days. Nine weekends. That’s how long we have to get everything in order.

It’s terrifying. Philip and I have been wavering between, “No problem – we can do this!” and “OMG, OMG, what are we thinking??? There’s no way to get all this done!”

We’re shooting to be out of the house and on the boat by the beginning of November. While we may take a bit more time working on the boat in the Chesapeake before heading south to warmer climes for the winter, that leaves us a pretty tight timeline to get everything done, at least what can’t be done on the boat once we hit said warmer climes. We hope to be headed for the Bahamas before Christmas, when the trade winds kick in.

I’ve given notice at work – my last day will be October 29 – and am working on finding my replacement. We will be renting the house, which means that we have to finish the basement renovations and paint the front before we leave. There’s still a ton of work to be done on the boat, and Philip’s pulling 10 hour days of hard labor in the 100 degree heat to try to get it done.

What’s more complicated is all of the details of leaving a life. In addition to the aforementioned rental renovations, we have to somehow dispose of a decade’s worth of accumulated stuff. We’re selling what we can and giving the rest away. It’s oddly satisfying, paring down to the bare essentials. You quickly realize how much you don’t need, from the unused sports equipment to the kitchen appliances, to live a full and happy life. We’ve been incredibly frugal over the past 9 years, saving every penny we can for this adventure and eschewing unnecessary crap, but we still had a basement full of junk and more stuff than we need.

A couple of weeks ago, within the course of a couple of days, my parents and several friends sent me an article from the New York Times about how having less stuff can make you happier. True, but what they didn’t discuss was how damn much work it is to get rid of all your stuff.

Sure is liberating, though. A couple of months ago, I burned all my journals and boxes of “memories” that went back 30 years. When asked why by a visiting friend, I started opening the journals to random pages: angst, angst, and more angst. At some point in my life journey, probably thanks to yoga, I’d realized that all of it was just STUFF, heavy stuff, weighing me down, and needed to go, because everything we are is who we are in this moment. When I was younger, and more uncertain of myself, I’d re-read my journals regularly, valiantly trying to decode my current self from my past self. At some point, that just seemed, well, not only unnecessary, but untruthful. At each and every moment of our lives, we choose who we are in that moment. Not that the past isn’t relevant, but that the part that is relevant is only that which you carry inside, and how you choose to deal with it today.

So I created a bonfire in my backyard grill, and torched that shit. It was fantastic.

I only wish getting rid of the rest of the crap in my house were that easy.