31-01-2011, mid-afternoon in London
Stopping over in Heathrow at the moment. I overestimated the time it would take to go through immigration / customs and get back in through security. Luckily LHR is a fairly mellow place to wait.
I had never flown Virgin before, and it was slightly surreal. I’ve grown so accustomed to American flights. We huddle around the gate in tense hordes, mobbing the gate agents in the mad rush to get on board and sit down as quickly as possible.
In contrast, Virgin loaded slowly, with people trickling on for close to forty minutes. The plane was enormous – and quite empty. In my row of eight seats, there were only three people. I failed to take full advantage of the room, which I have begun to regret. There also appeared to be a bar area on the plane which I wasn’t really expecting. I should probably have explored it, but instead I slept.
I’m realizing how sedentary I am. In Colorado, rather than explore I stayed at the airport. Yes, I made an airport friend, but I’ve heard lovely things of Denver and I didn’t bother to visit it at all. I have too much stuff, I convinced myself, I’m not particularly mobile. And anyway, I wouldn’t want to sleep in and miss my flight tomorrow.
While I gave myself several excuses for remaining sedentary, the luggage one was the most persuasive. I think I need to work on packing lighter, in order to not feel trapped by my own belongings. This trip I packed relatively light (one 20 kg bag, one smaller 16 kg bag, and an overstuffed “purse” filled with odds and ends).
Property really does have a transformative effect. I feel weighed down by goods, both while traveling and at home. I have boxes in three states. Ok, I have boxes in two states an assortment of objects in a third state, including my favorite pillow and an awkward-to-pack basket.
There are things I own that actually matter, but so much of what I own is of fairly little importance. In NY I have five boxes of book and school supplies. I should have just given the pens to goodwill and recycled the half-full notebooks. Instead I carefully ripped out the used sections, ready to fill the rest of the notebooks next year.
There is any number of reasons I have such a hard time getting rid of things. While I’m sure some of it is modeling, I think a great deal of it is that fear founded in early childhood. My God, if I get rid of this one, what if I can never find a replacement? What if I need to bye a new one and can’t afford it? This is a perfectly good thingy, and it would be shamefully wasteful to get rid of it.
I packed most of my stuff at home into big plastic bins. I left a few things out, but relatively little: books, some clothes, a single drawer in my desk.
