Last time it was about details, drowning in them, to be more specific. While I am still up to my chin in the minutiae of departing the country for a year, I have found myself in another not-particularly-comfortable predicament: I’m surrounded by chaos.
Our usually orderly home is a study in disarray.
There are boxes – flat; assembled, but half-filled; filled and taped shut – both tucked into corners and boldly sitting in the middle of rooms. There are crates dotted about the apartment filled with random collections of things, like electrical tape, climbing gear, extension cords, and unframed posters. I have piles of things that I move from one location to another as we consolidate, pack, use up and slough off. Post-its flutter in the air conditioning with messages like ‘take to work’, ‘give to [insert friend’s name here]’, and ‘donate’.
We’ve done countless trips downstairs to give strangers our things, sometimes for cash and other times for free. Who knew someone could get so excited about a bedside table? We gifted our mattress to a friend and are now sleeping on side-by-side single mattresses on the floor. We have filled the clothing donation bin on the ground floor and have contributed several times to ‘hard rubbish’.
Every day we move the chaos about in an attempt to make it smaller, and to give it order, shape and purpose.
My inner perfectionist is either on high alert, causing me to appease her with increasingly advanced lists, or she’s slacking off, beginning to ignore the chaos, at times embracing it.
And, maybe she’s right.
Maybe the chaos is a beautiful part of this journey, there to juxtapose against the simplicity of living a year aboard with a suitcase and a laptop.
Sandy Barker | Author 
your upheaval is disturbing even to me…I feel your state of mind. ;But I will see you eventually, and that’s good.