Emotional Baggage

Newsletter 2024-03-22

There’s nothing more important than packing. That’s why I’ve been putting it off all day. If I do it right, I won’t do it at all, or at least not until well after we were already supposed to leave on our trip. Nothing bothers me quite as much as having to put my own stuff in a bag to go somewhere else. Don’t get me wrong: I love planning trips. I just hate taking the final steps to actually go on them. Vacations are much better in concept than practice. No matter how much time I spend packing, I know I’m going to forget something, and it will probably be whatever I need the most. No list I make and no reminders I set on my phone are powerful enough to avoid that inevitable outcome. It’s the surest proof I’m no longer of sound mind or body. Nothing will make you question your own sanity faster than forgetting pajamas four vacations in a row.

At home, I can get by with very little. I tell myself that lie as I’m surrounded by an entire house full of my favorite things. It’s excruciating deciding what to leave behind. In my own domicile, I wear slippers year round. I definitely need them on the trip. I’m a big, tough, manly man, but also my precious little tootsies get cold. Bringing slippers when I travel will open me up to ridicule, perhaps not from other people, who seldom notice I exist, but definitely from myself. I can’t drive in slippers, so I’ll have to bring regular shoes, too, and then a separate pair for the gym since they don’t like you walking in with the ones you wear on the street. That’s a rule made for gym branches in places with snow on the ground all summer, but they enforce it nationwide for some reason. By the time I bring all the required footwear, I might as well move to wherever I’m going since I’ll already have all my earthly belongings with me. My baggage train is out of control.