I'm quickly becoming an expert at prioritizing. My current mindset being: if I haven't used it in the past 6 weeks, I'll likely never use it again. This is the first time a move has involved putting the majority of my belongings into storage for a year. Normally, I throw all of my useless belongings into trash bags, lug them across town/state lines, and then unpack them, all the while wondering, "why do I own this?" This time however, oh my god, I'm discovering how difficult it really is to group things into the categories of: 1. I need this in Spain / 2. I'll want this when I return home / and 3. This should be donated or thrown out, without losing my mind. I leave in 7 days, and even though I'm making steady headway, I'm completely overwhelmed with forcing myself to let go of old items in order to make space for my future adventures. Its been eye-opening to see how emotionally attached I am to useless items. Tossing the purple fold-up sunglasses I wore to Mardi Gras my freshman year of college shouldn't ignite such a storm of old memories. Donating the crummy t-shirts I won at a UVM hockey game shouldn't bring to me tears. Condensing my life into boxes is helping me to prioritize my memories; to sort out the fond, painful, and funny into knick-knacks. Becoming a traveler means finding ways to make memories that can fit into my back pocket without weighing me down. I'm slowly learning how to move forward without having to leave everything I love behind.
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