Living in the Moment

Well we officially are on the road as of this moment! We left our apartment in Tarrytown 30 minutes ago and braved the New York City traffic with our trailer to go over the George Washington Bridge to reach 95 South. We will stay on this road until we reach Florida.

I guess I should assess my emotions at this time since it is the first day of many that I will be living on the road. To recap my day, I woke up at 8 AM and got to work packing up our kitchen. It was the last thing to pack because we were still eating at the house our last week. After I taped up the last box, Evan drove them over to our storage unit and I began packing our 5' x 8' trailer.

Packing the trailer took longer than I anticipated! Our house was almost completely empty as I had been packing all week and the day before we had an all day garage sale and literally sold everything that was left on the main floor in the house. June 1st is a common move in date for renters so most of our buyers were in need of everything for their new apartments. The bedroom and bathroom were almost fully stocked with items that we use every day which I needed to organize and put into the trailer for life on the road.

When I looked at the clock and it read 3 PM, I couldn't believe it. How could it have taken me nearly all day to move two little rooms of the house into the trailer? It seemed like around every corner there was another 30 minute project for me to work on. It was the DVDs in their jackets needing to be transported into a binder to save space; the bathroom medicine cabinet to be emptied into a tupperware; the basement had a few corners with old shoes, jackets and picture frames needing to be either placed into trash bags or put into a box for donation.

I like this picture of our backyard in
Tarrytown. It feels like home. 

Finally, we needed to scrub the entire apartment before leaving. I knew this was going to be a laborious task because Evan and I have lived in 3 different apartments in the last 4 years. Each time we moved, no matter how big or small the place, it took a long time to deep clean for the approval of the landlord. Our motivation is always to get back our security deposit so Evan and I cleaned the oven, the refrigerator racks, we washed all the baseboards, cleaned under radiator pipes, wiped clean the cob webs above the windows (sorry spiders!), scrubbed the shower drain until my back gave out. This cleaning is something that I would have loved to do while I was a tenant but the motivation of money isn't there.

At 7 PM we were finally ready to do our final walk thru with our landlord before taking off. Exhausted and covered in 2 year old dust bunnies mixed with fresh plaster from repairing nail holes in the wall Evan and I climbed into the car. We started the tour by pulling out of our parking spot on the corner of Linden Place and Ann Street for the last time. We hit a traffic jam before reaching the George Washington Bridge which sucked the last our energy from us.

Emotionally, I am not sad, excited, regretful, anxious or euphoric. I just feel tired and hungry which is so anticlimactic I want to feel depressed but I don't have enough energy to feel anything. Maybe being numb is the ideal state of being as we embark on this life changing journey. I think it better that I am unable to feel the weight of the change that is coming, it allows me to be free from my mind and just live in the present, moment to moment.

Final Assessment: I am embarking on this adventure with a weightlessness, my only concerns being the need for sleep and food which I can have at any time but will stubbornly hold out for. Living in the moment, I am not anticipating the moments to come.