Pre-Moving Thoughts

No, I'm not moving any time soon: the most definite I get is, "Probably in the next few years--or less if we have more winters like last year." Maybe the title should be Pre-Pre-Pre-Moving Thoughts. But I've been thinking about moving-related things as I come up on nine years that I've lived in this condo.

Nine years. This is the longest that I've lived in one place (by far) since my parents sold the house where I grew up, which was over 20 years ago. Two years here, three years there ... I've always hated moving (and I suck at it, frankly; I'm always up at least half the night before the movers come, and still have to tell them to ignore that pile of crap over there), but one thing it does, to some degree, is force you to assess your stuff periodically.

Assess. Your. Stuff.

And guess what I have done very little of in the last nine years? That's right.

Since deciding that, yeah, my next move will be to Florida*, I have started to look around with a more assessing eye. or tried to, anyway. It's hard; I'm not a hoarder, but definitely a pack rat. I take after my dad, and his dad, and I have to really force myself to remember things like how if virtually every library carries a certain author's books (like Dick Frances, or Anne McCaffrey), I don't have to own ALL of them. And I am trying to ask myself, as I look at things, "Is this something that I should (pay to) move to Florida?" I'm not getting rid of everything now, by any means, but given my poor track record with moving, starting a few years ahead of the actual move is a very good idea.
*Hi, Mom!

What is making me think of this tonight, specifically, is that I was trying to find some old pictures I have of my first cat, Honey, and I thought I had them in a small album, but it isn't where I thought it should be, and it isn't in the other place I thought it might be, and huh. Where else could it be, where my eye has been sliding past it unseeing for a few years.

Sigh. The place isn't that big, and it's nothing like those nightmares on shows about hoarding (I can't even watch those; it's like being a voyeur to mental illness), but it isn't spare and clear, either. Mostly I'm okay with that, but situations like this are frustrating.

It makes me wish I could time-travel back to when I was laid off in June and, knowing I would be working again by the end of August, make a plan to use all that time I had off, that I mostly spent either frantically buried in a book, or paralyzed with worry about what would happen next. How much I could get done with two months off, if only the worry had let me!