Day -40 : Losing my Footing

Five months of food and gear

Forty more days. You'd think that most of my thoughts would be taken up with preparations and planning for my hike. You'd be mistaken; We are selling our home. If everything goes according to plan, next week we'll be homeless. We are moving into a place less than half the size of our current home, and we'll be renting. As much as we love this home that we have lived in for the last seven years, it is not compatible with our values and priorities. We are uprooting our comfortable selves and changing this fundamental aspect of our lives. I feel very transitional, like I am in motion and not grounded. Like a cork bobbing on the waves, my life is becoming restless and unglued. We are currently still here, but mostly living out of boxes. Movers are scheduled for Friday. Movement, losing track, where's my socks? I can't find my shirt, digging through boxes I just packed.  I have a single room where I have put my gear and food boxes for my trip. My goal for the next week is to try to get everything in that room into a single place in our rental so that I have everything that I am going to need for the next five months in a place that can be located.

It's hard to let go of stuff. Strange as it sounds, it feels like a piece of who I am is cut away when I sell the couch that I really don't want or need. Even though we delivered it to it's new home, somehow it felt as though I was somehow less for it. When I buy something I think I am obtaining ownership of it, but in some bizarre way it ends up owning me. I don't think I am alone in this. My dad accumulated a basement full of stuff that somehow had value to him. When he past away my siblings and I spent a whole lot of time filling dumpsters with things that my dad didn't seem to be able to part with. I drive by homes with garage doors open and I see piles of stuff. Stuff that sits there week after week, month after month, year after year. As hard as it is to get rid of my stuff, there is a wonderfully freeing feeling that I get once it is gone. I anticipate having that feeling in a few weeks. Right now though, in the middle of the process of moving, I feel like my world is shaking, an earthquake is breaking the foundations of my comfortable life. A tsunami is washing over my world and I am not sure when or if anything will ever be the same as it was. It probably won't. It will be better, for now though, it's 'hang on, its about to get a bit bumpy'.