The Packening

Moving time. I hate it. I utterly hate it. I hate it with the white hot intensity of a collapsing supernova. It’s also an outstanding time to hit the pause button on your life and take stock of what you value, or have valued, or what you no longer value.

I’ll admit that I’ve been dragging my ass on this. I go to Utah in early-to-mid June to be with my kids and just kind of start over from scratch. I’m three days away from the end of March. I have April and May to get everything packed, sell the house, and get the hell out of dodge.

I wish I could be like Obi there. But I don’t have the luxury.

But let’s have a little bit of fun with this while it’s possible to do so. I’ll try to see what I can remember about the items as I pack them up. Let’s start with…

Assorted paperbacks: Admittedly, none of these are back-breakingly rare, but I have a very hard time ever justifying getting rid of a book. Several of these have been with me since high school, several others have been with me since college or thereabouts, a few older than either of those.

Doctor Who & other British Sci-Fi CDs & paperbacks: Sigh. I used to have near-complete sets of the Doctor Who New and Missing Adventures, and a near-complete library of Big Finish Productions releases. What happened to them? Most were flipped out of necessity at times when I was unemployed, dangerously broke, and desperately needed to come up with money. Do I regret letting go of what was once a huge collection? You bet I do. Every day. I try to circle back around and rebuild my Big Finish library whenever they have sales on the physical CDs. Just thinking about it makes me sad. The Doctor and friends have gotten me through a lot.

I’ll state upfront that Paul Cornell was my favorite NA author, with Kate Orman and Jon Blum running a close second. Actually, most of them were great reads; very seldom was a truly painful read allowed to slip through.

I do have a memory about my dog-eared, ridiculously-worn copy of the Blake’s 7 Programme Guide though. I think I might’ve been 14 or 15, and for some reason went to Tulsa with my dad, with whom I wasn’t really getting along at the time, and I picked that up at a Waldenbooks there.

Man, I hope my kids like me better than I liked my old man at the time. We’ll see.

Stay tuned. These are little boxes, and there’s the whole damn rest of the house to box up.