Adventures in Packingland.

Tonight I am packing to go home after my first year of college. It's a bit overwhelming, because I totally underestimated the emotional implications of this task. Deciding where everything will go, what to throw away, what to store, recycle, donate, etc. requires me to really look at everything I own and consider its value to me. But not only that, I have such strong associations with everything in here. Putting them away and leaving this room for some other freaked out first year feels like too much too soon. It feels like I was just getting everything together at this place, and now it's over.

But I don't think it'll really hit me until I take everything off my walls: the picture of my eighth grade idol Kurt Cobain, the Bob Dylan picture with the quote I used in my Common App essay, the Birth of Venus done in pop-art style, modern day Venus Christina Hendricks in a corset on the cover of New York Magazine, Washington Square Park where I will live someday even if it rips a hole in my wallet, the playlist of my life written by one of my best friends from high school, the 500 Days of Summer poster that I got for free because of a series of weird circumstances and because I will marry Joseph Gordon-Levitt someday. There's also a drawing from an old friend that he drew for me one of our first nights here when the whole world was like a party. There are the postcards of Swedish fairytales, the pictures from the National Geographic website that wore out my color ink cartridge...

Those things on my walls have been collected for a year and while the rest of my room has changed and the rest of my things have changed positions, they've stayed put. When they come down, it's over. I'm going to cover my walls at home with every picture I can find, because they look like bare bones now.

So that's one thought I've had while packing up my life here. Or one series of collective thoughts that fall under one category. Others are things like:

"Oh damn that's where that was."
"How the hell do I get honey off of imitation wood?"
"Can this be recycled?"
"Do I really, truly, need these unopened staples and index cards in my life?"
"This rug is like a singles bar for dust bunnies."
"Have I really just packed a whole backpack full of BOOKS? That's kind of awesome."
"What's with all this trash lying around? I disgust myself sometimes."
"Having a lot of stuff really makes life difficult sometimes."
"Oh I am so glad I'm not flying home."

Yeah. Adventures in Packingland is definitely more introspective than I thought. Maybe I should pick a soundtrack for it besides "Lady Gaga Radio" on Pandora.

Peace, Love, and Semicolons,
Lisa