My wife and I joke about the discrepancy between our day-to-day life, and the idea that our friends and family likely have about us.
A year ago, we moved to Santa Barbara from Oklahoma. Two weeks ago, we moved to Asheville, North Carolina. After two cross-country treks in a calendar year, we assume the wanderlust brushstroke is used by those friends and family to describe what we’re doing: a couple out there adventuring, traveling, and dodging responsibility.
Au contraire.
Don’t get me wrong, I feel grateful for the opportunity to make these moves. To do this. But it’s been anything but wanderlust. It’s been necessary, grueling, and rewarding, based on a striving for our dream. And in what led to our last unpacked box today, a process six months in the making, I began to understand some things about myself through moving.
Here’s what I can tell you, if you’d like to skip the whole moving thing and jump to hard wisdom:
Lesson One – It’s easier to do hard things when you want to do it
Intentionality in moving (and life) really matters. One year ago, my wife and I moved her stuff from OKC to Santa Barbara (I was already living in California). We were excited to live together in Santa Barbara; what’s not to relish? Wine. Mountains. Oprah. Prince Harry. She was keen to start an internship, and I was ready to explore the Central Coast’s point breaks.
But… we didn’t really want to move there. Of course, we did choose Santa Barbara and made the best choice for us, at the time. Yet, it was from a selected list of my wife’s internship locations. And we played it safe, staying close to where I did my residency and considered home, Orange County. Further, when the decision was made, we were in a period of stress and uncertainty (I, for one, was in the midst of my mid-life medicine identity crisis). Thus, we chose a certain opportunity. It was a choice in survival and led, somewhat, by fear. Still, not until we embarked to Asheville did we get the difference between the two moves.
In our Asheville move, everything has been easier. The preparations. The selling off of furniture. The packing of the Uhaul. The fourteen-hour hauls cross-country. The unpacking. The finding of new furniture.
Deep down, we knew we’d chosen that. After weeks of discussion, this was our choice. We aimed with heart at our target, and could live with the consequences. It’s had intention as it’s virtue.
Adversity is relative depending on your level of want-to. This move was objectively harder. Longer. More expensive. But that’s the difference; when you want it, suffering becomes relative. Want the big choices in life.
Lesson Two – Just throw it away
Only so many times can you look at the same box, still unopened from the last move, and mindlessly lift it into the moving truck. Only so many times can you take a shirt you haven’t worn for a year and fold it into a box, to be mindlessly lifted into the moving truck. Only so many times…
In moving to California from Oklahoma, we loaded a Budget moving van. A WHOLE VAN, for only one of us. Due to a pricing surge in van and trailers for the Asheville trip, we were forced to pack our belongings into a 5×8 Uhaul trailer. You do the Tetris; we had to sell all of our furniture… that we brought from Oklahoma.
And you know what? It’s been awesome. Hauling a small trailer, as opposed to big ass moving van with a car towed behind, is like swinging the baseball bat after taking practice swings with the donut. Weightless.
To its credit, furniture makes moving faster because your items have somewhere to go. In Asheville, we’ve located every piece of furniture in our home. That’s taken time. But guess what? We don’t have to fit random pieces of furniture into our vision. The canvas is clean.
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Lesson three – You OWN THE JOURNEY
About an hour from Amarillo, my wife and I were hungry for dinner. A real dinner. Well familiarized with the I-40 establishments after previous Amarillo stops, we wanted something that hit harder than Taco Villa and Whataburger. And we wanted to sit down; being out of the car for an hour was worth any addition to our ETA.
Yelp led us to a place called It’s a Punjabi Affair. With an adventurous spirit, we opted for Indian… in Amarillo. And my god was that risk rewarded. On the back of my tailgate in their parking lot, we sat peering over a golf course’s evening sprinkler dance, dipping the best naan of our lives into fenugreek chicken.
We talked, reviewed, and consolidated, what it was we were doing (moving cross-country), by not talking about any of that and just eating.
Pausing is often more difficult than doing, but pausing makes the doing easier. The rest of that drive was cruise control.
Lesson four – Things die quickly if you’re not there
I-40 spans four time zones. And across our coast-to-coast endeavor, we saw some cool things. I love the Colorado River’s blue near Needles, love the Pondersosa pine’s slow ascension to power as you track toward Flagstaff, and love the complete domination of ivy across ground cover after Little Rock.
But in between, you notice a pattern; there’s a lot of old and abandoned shit. The historical victorian homes along route 66 with shattered, by rock and bullet, windows, now closer to a rejoin with earth than occupation by human. Gas station after gas station, restaurant after restaurant, with story after story, done and dusted by progress, left for composting by graffiti. It’s depressing, looking at what was and what’s utterly lost in those places.
I’m reminded to pay attention to my life. To my relationships. To my choices. Our life faces the same fate if left abandoned. It requires constant energy and attention. If not, the earth doesn’t care what you were or what you did, moving right along, graffiti can in hand.
Lesson five – Act quickly before routine grows back
When you move, everything gets a bump in difficulty.
Last week on arrival, I was thirsty. After 30 minutes, I’d found the box with our glasses. After another thirty minutes, I’d internet-deciphered that tap water is safe to drink here. And that’s an hour I never get back.
This is how it goes. This is moving. So, if we accept everything as harder, even the once routine and mindless, why not insert a new habit?
In Santa Barbara, I talked about doing yoga. And never got on the mat. Not a single time across the whole year. Here, in the midst of day-to-day upheaval, I’ve got the practice in the beginning phases of reinstallation, practicing every other day in the morning or afternoon. Without a locked in schedule, yoga slid right in and has found footing. And it’s nice, I’m more productive after each session.
Not often do we get completely fresh looks at our day’s habits, with an easier chance to make changes. Be sure to plant seeds before routine’s overgrowth crowds out the sun.
(Photo Caption: Two months ago when my wife took this photo, we recorded a video for the 32 Truths series. In it, I said that epiphanies come rarely, but when they do, they were often outside and while off my phone. Now, I’d like to add a third quality: while driving in quiet. No podcasts. No music. Nothing but open road and ideas. 2,386 miles later, I’m better for every mile spent in silence.)
