Someone turn the speed down on this treadmill...

For four days, my mornings have consisted of waking up at 7am and listening to a dial tone for a straight hour with no success. I still have no word on my visa application, and with little more than two weeks to go, it's starting to get imperative that I find it. The Swedish embassy in Washington D.C. though, apparently has little to say about it outside of "the visa lines are still busy, please continue to hold to hold your position in the line."

Grrr.

This week is my last week in Seattle. They might as well tap caffeine to my veins. Between packing up my shit from the house, wrapping up experiments and administrative tasks at work, happy hours and well-intended celebratory goodbye parties, looking for Swedish apartments (which are near nonexistent), monitoring Craigslist, and working on my first school assignment, this is probably the equivalent to a finals week in college. To make matters worse, Monday I heard word that my replacement quit. Balls.

At least, after this, I'll have 3 weeks of blissful unemployment before plunging back into school. I'm going to have to run 5 miles each day just to relax again---

Holy shit I just got someone. MY VISA HAS BEEN APPROVED.

"No, the cat's not for sale"

So. Developments:

The yard sale was a success, despite things being a little discombobulated in the beginning. I was able to get rid of almost everything without meeting too many creepers--though this one guy was super adamant about me selling my flute for $10. I told him to screw off, to which he immediately, and without any headway, replied that he liked my shirt. Ew.

I made out with $67. I put it in my change jar. I marked it "SWEDEN" about three weeks ago.

I won't lie: despite my revelation about two weeks ago, it still feels very weird to get rid of my things. It's definitely not so much that they're gone, but rather, the empty space in my room bothers me. I woke up the next day and instantly felt disgruntled looking around. Like I didn't belong there. Like there was nothing there I cared about. Which, inherently, is true, since the house itself is falling apart and I can count on my fingers the positive aspects of living in Wallingford at this point.

But that feeling's been an underlining theme this week. Actually, this week has been very hard. The pieces of my life are now falling away very quickly, and I'm feel like I'm scrambling to find some tangible understanding for what it means to be me without people, places, and things.

In addition, this Monday my leaving work was unexpectedly publicized in the weekly newsletter. For the first time in the two months I've planning for Europe, I was faced with my first round of goodbyes. Apparently, that means lots of well-intentioned happy hours. Lots of nice emails. Lots of hugging and "best of luck"s. But also, lots of wrapping up, check-out checklists, and other sad formalities.

I was ready for the loss of the material. I was not ready for goodbyes.

On the other hand, some other news:

- My Craigslist backpack is a dud. Not so cool. After I loaded it fully and trekked around with it, I discovered that it doesn't fit my shoulders properly. So, back to REI to buy my back up model, and perhaps then to a secondhand store to sell the old one.

- My boss at work was gracious enough to introduce me to a faculty scientist in Sweden. Let's see if science can once again save me from unemployment.

- Pippin, my beloved hamster, has a proper home. As does my double mattress, my white bathroom shelf, and--soon--my beautiful white bike and my beloved scooter.

Next week I move back home to Bainbridge. Back home to TV, the family dog, and the beautiful view of the  Cascades. Hopefully things will be better. There's only one thing that's standing in my way of being totally confident about this: my residence visa is still missing.

Summer Molt

Finally!! It is officially summer in Seattle. A blissful, yet sticky, 90-95^oF. For a couple days now, we’ve been in the middle of a massive heat wave, but I haven’t seen too many people complaining. On the contrary, after the Fourth of July, where it was a record low of 65^oF, everyone’s been walking around and sweating happiness. Lovely.


Today, I took advantage of my Saturday and decided to do some errands that’d put me riding all over the city. Scootering in this weather has been absolutely addictive. The warm air blowing on your face, curving around your arms and legs—it feels like sinking into a hot tub for the first time, or the settling peace of sipping tea after a skin-numbing day of skiing. Manned with my new backpack, I mobbed the roads of Capitol Hill and the U-District, selling old clothes to start building up cash for Europe. After three consignment shops and one vintage clothing store, I totaled a meager $21.00. Dejected, and feeling somewhat dehumanized, I came home and threw the remaining of my clothes into a box for next week.

This July, I will become Yard Sale Queen, having two sales planned in my future and numerous Craigslist ads to manage before I move home at the end of the month. So far, I haven’t really accumulated what I thought I would when I started this plan: my ad for my twelve-year-old Gemeinhardt 2SP isn’t getting much attention, and apparently, my wardrobe doesn’t have a very high retail factor. But, regardless, I decided this morning to throw the rest of my clothing in with the other sale items; maybe someone will buy them.

I am doing pretty well, in terms of fundraising. The good news is that I will meet my goal and then some. It’s the Swedish unemployment rate that’s scaring me. Even with my skills in the research field, there’s a chance I may not find a job in Sweden to fund my education there completely. Hopefully, that won’t be the case, but it’s always good to prepare.

By the end of the month, I hope to have stripped myself down—either through sale or donation—to only a few items of serious importance and practicality. It’s funny: so many people speak of the positive benefits of purging yourself of material goods. “They don’t matter,” they say, “they’re not what’s important”—and they’re right. But regardless, I was dreading this stage in my planning: I liked my life, I liked my things. I liked the range of choices I had and the feeling of self-sustainability. But the fact of the matter is—and I had to train myself several times to focus on this point—that there are far better things in life that can sustain you than what you can tangibly hold.

My final acknowledgement of this finally came to me last week. In starting my ads on Craigslist, it became apparent to me how easily I could again obtain all the things that I wanted to keep. My Honda scooter, my Peugeot mixte, my microwave, baking supplies, dresses, tables, DVDs—all of it, I could get back. The sentimental value was just something I was putting on these objects: all they were, really, were things that I needed to serve a purpose. I realized how silly it was to for a pilot to keep a car when he really needed a plane.

But, as if that wasn’t enough, I also came to another, more unsettling, realization. My sentimental values were arbitrary. Seriously. Think back in your memory to two years ago. Does that tea set you bought jump first into your mind? Do those shoes? Does that toaster oven, your car, or TV set just appear right before your eyes? No. In my empty young mind, all I see are people, places, feelings, lessons learned—but not that scarf I got for two dollars, or that book I thought was great. I realized those types of things are not objects for motile life. They’re nice, but I wasn’t going to remember them.

Ever since, I have been writing down all the things I use on a daily basis over a single week: these are the things I will take with me. The list is remarkably short. But I’m okay with it.

It’s just another proof of principle that to take action on good advice is often harder than you think.

DIE polycelphalic To-Do List from Hell

Attention. After much deliberation, emailing, and time zone math, I have finally bought my flight to take me away from all things friendly, forever (ha).

It takes fifteen hours to get from Seattle to Stockholm, not including a necessary lay-over in Iceland, London, or Amsterdam. To avoid losing my legs from lack of movement, I decided to break up my flight into two stops: August 16, I'll leave Seattle for a 2-3 day stop in Boston, Massachusetts. Then, after getting my fill of Red Sox, family accents, and babies, I'll leave the country for Stockholm, Sweden on August 19th.

So, success! Cross that one of the list. Several times. Jeesh.

In addition, on Pride Weekend, I found a used Eagle Creek traveling backpack from a nice girl on Capitol Hill. Thankfully for me, she was not daunted by my Yeti hat, boa, and silver lipstick that I had sported that morning for the parade, and I managed to score the item for under $100. I promptly brought it home, gleefully unzipped all the pockets, and wore it around for the remainder of the day. Now I have to bring back the overpriced new one I bought from REI not 24 hours before.

Actually, I've come to notice this that kind of thing is quite common for me nowadays. Once I get one thing crossed off my mammoth list, three more pop up. Half of me expected the amount of work associated with me getting to Sweden, but most of me is still reeling from the sheer scale of everything left to do in 6 weeks. It's not just moving--as I've explained to my colleagues at work—it's moving to a different country. Suddenly, I have consider that, yes, I do have to convert all of my recipes to Word documents, and yes, I do have to an external harddrive for all my DVDs, and no, it's probably not possible to ship everything—not when a freakin' 2x2 foot package costs my firstborn just to get to Bellingham. 

While there are decisions I find I can make easily—like which color backpack I want or whether I want the window seat or aisle—there are some decisions that are so much exponentially harder. Like when my last day at work will be (July 30th), or whether I should pay more for a direct flight so I don't risk losing my bags (yes), or how many days I should have with my family (2 weeks), or what should I charge for my beloved scooter, Ruby (a million dollars). 

Very hard. Harder than I thought they'd be, at any rate.

Don't get me wrong. I am very excited to be going to Sweden. But, sitting here in this espresso-laced coffeeshop, only blocks away from my old apartment in Capitol Hill and the streets with my other favorite hipster haunts, one has to keep a very tight grip on principles—especially when uncertainty is the only thing you're in for.