Me and Craigslist are like THIS

Here I am trying to Nerd Cool (yes, I believe such a thing exists. I may be in denial, but I like it here.) But it is not such a good look on me. It always comes across more like Dork Loser. However, I need a visual for this post, so it stays.

I feel like I've spent the last 2 years of my life on craigslist. I could write a Craigslist for Dummies book. First, I spent untold hours selling all our stuff before the move to Hawaii, and then turned around and did the same thing buying it all back on the other side. Then I was trying to find a place. And a job. And then another place to share with my sister. And then another job. And then a new place once our lease was up. It's come full circle, and now I'm back to selling all our crap before we move back to Texas. All we have is a big metal moving box - whatever doesn't fit gets left behind.

It's weird to think that everything inanimate that has ever mattered to me will be in one small box on a boat. One little disaster and we'd be back to square one. Goodbye, computer and all our pictures we've ever taken. Wedding Album. Gifts given whose worth in sentimentality greatly outshines the original cost of the item. Lots of bad paintings by me. (On second thought, the bottom of the ocean might not be such a bad place for those). It's kind of a freaky feeling. I know it's just stuff, and we shouldn't be materialistic, but it's OUR stuff. It represents maybe a billion hours worth of searching and haggling with strangers, and just as much time being the stage for my memories of the past two years.

And as soon as we hit the other side, I'll be back on, looking for furniture, cars, apts and jobs. I am so ready to be done with craigslist. To have a little while where I can settle down in one place and not have to worry about the near future when I will be moving or whatever. Just some time in a home I can come to and not have to evaluate the future cost of moving for each item. It's actually been a good exercise in minimalism out here - whenever we go to buy something, we ask ourselves, 'do we really need that?' because odds are we don't have space, or we won't have room to ship it back to the mainland.

Of course, that will be remedied when we pick up all the stuff we didn't deem important enough for the ride over to Hawaii. I vaguely remember it being like 1/3 of our total belongings. Although at this point, I have no idea what else we could have really needed. Every now and then I miss my sweaters and giant roasting pan, but other than that, I have no idea what's in all those boxes. It's going to be like Christmas in June.

Or the Nightmare Before Christmas, depending on what we find.