Brian's World

Boxes

I’ve been collecting a post of memories, things that make me think of being back on the East coast.  Perhaps I’ll post it at some point.  I won’t lie, I’m not missing the brutally hot weather folks are having over there, but I do miss the sound of the air conditioner clicking on at home.  I’ve also come to terms with the idea that I probably won’t make it to the Vermont house this summer.  As luck would have it, the year we finally get Internet at the house is the year I’m on the other side of the country.  I do hope that I get a chance to go back there at some point… I wish I could pluralize points and make my visits a consistent thing but I don’t want to get overly optimistic.

Growing up, and even up until around two years ago, Vermont was never really my favorite place to go.  It mean no internet which meant limited to no programming, the television was mediocre, there were always a large number of chores to do, and there wasn’t always lots of “fun” things to do in the area.  In college the VT house became this once-a-year get away for a few of my South Hadley friends, or something close to that.  We would go for a long weekend, cook stuff, swim in the lake, etc… kind of like a camping trip but with a house.  My visits were mainly limited to those once a summer trips with friends.  Not having internet access was always an easy way for the work-driven me to write off visits to the house.  I don’t believe in taking weekends off, and it’s not easy to work on web applications with an offline copy of the web.  I was also socially pressured to avoid going up with just my parents, apparently that became uncool at some point after high school.  It probably would have been uncool in high school too but I didn’t really have people to hang out with on the weekends so no one noticed I was missing.  I want to close this paragraph with “better luck next time self” but the probability of a next time seems low at the moment.  Perhaps this whole statement has been a complicated metaphor for missing spending time with my dad in recent years.

Onto a slightly less uncomfortable, but still not super pleasant topic.

My living room has a large collection of broken down cardboard boxes from all the Ikea furniture I put together.  My walls remain, save one clock and a small piece of “art” (I bought it at target, so I’m not sure if it counts as art), empty.  I hung the art up to give myself something to stare at when I need to focus on something besides the computer screen.  Completely logical.  Otherwise my apartment looks fairly generic, devoid from personel affects.  Even if you searched the cupboards and cabinets you would fine fairly generic stuff.  I’ve never been great at decorating, primarily due to a lack of interest, but I give myself credit for how un-personal I’ve managed to make this place.  It could probably pass as a safe house or something if I wasn’t using most of the drawers for clothes.  Interesting marketing idea there.

Back to the boxes though.  I have no reason to hold onto them.  It’s not like I am going to disassemble anything and make it look like new again such that I can return it.  Some of the boxes are large, which I’ve been using as an excuse… but I carried most of the stuff in here solo so that’s not really a valid justification.  I suspect on some deeper level I’m hesitating to throw them out… erm recycle (that’s what people call it around here)… because then my presence seems more permanent.  Having those boxes serve as a reminder how recently I’ve setup camp here and I feel hold me in a more transient state.  People don’t have boxes around for fun, they have boxes around to move things.  Ideally I’m going to muster up the courage / motivation to move them this week.

As strange as this is going to sound, I’ve noticed that I’ve been cleaning the bathroom a lot less around here than I would have in my Troy apartment.  It’s not like the Troy bathroom was always dirtier or this bathroom stays magically clean (my hair falling out tends to make mess of things these days).  I postulate that I clean this bathroom less because of the lowered chance that anyone besides me will be using it.  Sure, I didn’t have many visitors in Troy, but the potential to have visitors was an order of magnitude or two higher.

I had the pleasure of reading someone else’s blog this past weekend.  Someone who’s story seemed contextually slightly similar to me, graduating from RPI, getting a job on the West Coast, and having to pack up his life to move out here a year or two ago. In his “wisdom” (his words, not mine), he was glad to have friends that had moved all across the country because it made moving much easier, he already had friends in the Bay Area.  I believe he had actually moved out west with a friend who might have been doing the exact same thing.  I am unsure if he was being “wise” or just being socially more strategic or lucky in his selection of friends.

I should probably head to bed, in theory I have work or something like that in the morning.  I’ll take comfort in knowing it’s the same moon over here, perhaps that will help me rest tonight.

Good night moon.