Moving once, moving twice, moving thrice? I seriously need to look at my life and look at my choices, because between Friday of last week and the time I leave for Kyrgyzstan in three weeks, I’ll have packed and unpacked my life a total of three times.  That’s a lot of time to look at just how much stuff I’ve managed to accumulate in six years living on the East Coast.

I’m a bit of a pack rat, so this process has not been without its emotional anguish.  The things that we save often have so many stories and so much sentimental value to them, while others are disposable.  I have one box that happens to contain everything I was wearing on April 15th, 2013 during the Boston Marathon.  Another had a bunch of Dropbox t-shirts which, if you’ve ever been on a college campus in the past 5 years, are extremely easy to procure and replace.  Another had a foil space blanket I had saved from one of my marathons.

How do we make those choices then?  How do we decide what of all of our worldly possessions is worth the effort to pack, ship, store, and ultimately leave for years at a time in cardboard?  Welcome to my life right now.

Beginning on Friday, I packed everything up to get out of my apartment.  Then, I unpacked it all and went box by box, retrieving things I knew I’d want to take to Kyrgyzstan and then choosing to save, donate, or throw away the rest.  My mom is pretty sure I’ve gotten rid of over half my stuff by now, which is pretty crazy seeing as I had more than two carfuls of it.  So, I packed all my bags for Kyrgyzstan.  Then I unpacked a little bit to get me through the rest of this week.

Then, in Seattle, I’ll unpack, pack a quick bag for a family visit, then unpack that, then finally repack everything when I finally go over to Kyrgyzstan.  I won’t be fully settled until the summer with my permanent host family, but when I unpack that time, I’m happy to say I’ll hopefully be staying put for the duration of the adventure.  Weirdly, that will be the longest I’ve gone without packing up and moving since 2008.

Is your head spinning from all that yet?  Because mine sure is.

As for that stuff I mentioned? The clothing from April 15th is definitely being saved, but the Dropbox shirts not so much.  As for the marathon foil blanket?  That wound up coming with me, since it’s compact and might be useful if I find myself in need of additional warmth while out on a hike or something.  I’ll just have to hope that “Rock n’ Roll Marathon” doesn’t mean anything offensive in Russian or Kyrgyz.