Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Move It

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Liz Lemon's Home
I moved this weekend, as previously mentioned.

Moving is a weird thing.  Or, at least, it can be.  Or, at least, I've personally found it to be.

This is my sixth apartment in NYC.  I had two addresses during my time in Boston.  Before that, I lived in an attic in Amsterdam.  And before that: college (four addresses in four years).1

Sounds exhausting, to spell it all out, to think back on all the moving I've done since the age of 18.  All the boxes.  All the change of address forms.

But I like it, moving.  Usually.  I love having new environments to explore, new walls on which to hang my old pictures of Frank Sinatra.  New windows to gaze out.  New corner bodegas to frequent.  Moving can feel like a do-over, a fresh start, a chance for things to be different.  Maybe.

But hand-in-hand with that sort of change comes a mini-identity crisis (at least, it can; at least, for me).  With all my stuff packed in boxes - all that stuff that (for better or worse) can often define me - I'm left asking questions like:

Who am I? Where am I? Where do I belong?

The urgency of these questions fades with each box that gets unpacked, with each change-of-address form I complete, with each day I spend in the new place, and with each passing evening that I don't go to sleep in the old place.  I get settled in; I get things figured out.

But in the interim, I like asking these questions of myself, checking in with me, seeing if anything has changed lately besides my address.


1 "I graduated from Anger Management the same way I graduated from Cornell: on time." Andy Bernard quote, apropos of nothing, 'cept it came to my mind.

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