I’m moving tomorrow.
Or rather: I’m leaving my pandemic-era hunker location to move into a US-based apartment for a year, as was my plan back in early 2020 before essentially every aspect of my then-ambitions were sidelined for something like a year and a half.
Moving for me is typically a fairly enjoyable process.
Part of that enjoyment is derived from what moving is—what it represents and allows and encourages—and part of it is the result of what moving typically isn’t, for me.
Because of how frequently I travel, I don’t have a lot of unpackable, possession-infrastructure. Depending on where I’ve just been, for how long, and what sorts of weather and experiences I expect to face next, sometimes I’ll have more than my typical couple of bags when changing locations, but even then it’s never been more than I could comfortably fit in my small, hatchback sedan.
This next move is different in some regards because I’m headed to a new town for at least a year and intending to scope out the area for a potential, longer-term investment. That could mean setting up a more permanent home base in the area, which in turn means having to think a bit differently about how I plan and perceive the move.
I’m not, this time around, necessarily building something that I want to be collapsible like a tent. I’m instead maybe building something stable and long-lasting: a place from which to travel, rather than a place to which I’m traveling.
The practical differences between planning for portability and planning for locational endurance are pretty stark across the board, but one of the stranger aspects of this move is considering what I want in a space, ideally, as opposed to how I can reshape myself, my habits, and to some degree my needs to align with a space I’ll be occupying for a time.
Being capable of shapeshifting, putty-like, so that you fit whatever space you occupy, is something you tend to learn if you travel enough and if you go out of your way to adjust to local conditions rather than attempting to bring your familiar perspective and habits and preferences with you.
It’s a less useful capability, though, when you’re looking at what amounts to a blank canvas, and you thus don’t have a preexisting shape to take on.
Putty fills existing spaces nicely, but it’s difficult to meaningfully build around something so latently shapeless.
The initial value of moving—which includes, among many other things, the forced opportunity to question all of one’s habits and routines and beliefs and perspectives and possessions and investments—remains intact, whatever shape one’s next home and lifestyle might take.
But I’m learning a lot about myself this time around because the idea of having a more rooted space between trips—and having that space look and feel like me, rather than the other way around—is a significant contrast to my usual mode of operation.
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