Travel bag overhead. Overhead bins full, can that item or bag fit under the seat in front of me? Keeping my bag light enough that I can lift it into the overhead bin is nice. I wonder if I’ll always be able to lift my bag into the overhead bin. I feel the twinge in my shoulder sometimes when I lift it overhead. Feel that same twinge remind me not to judge the women on the plane who can’t get their overstuffed bag into the bin.

It’s part ability to pack efficiently, lucky to still be young enough not to need to bring so much, the good fortune to travel back and forth to a beach house where my mom generously allows me to keep stuff so I don’t have to pack much in the first place.

I used to think I needed so much to be comfortable in so many imagined scenarios. As I get older, I don’t seem to need all of the things and stuff I used to think I needed. I can be quite satisfied with what’s there. Travel in the jeans, throw the sundress on, leave it on until bed, sleep naked, wake up and put on a borrowed robe, dress for the day and that’s it. What’s there is what I’ve got and I’ll make it work.

Also I have a self confidence I didn’t have before, or had, lost, and regained. I may not be wearing the coolest thing in your closet, but it’s something I cobbled together in my borrowed one, and it looks different from the last combo I made from this random ensemble of t-shirts, tops, pants, skirts and dresses. So when I wear it, I feel like it’s the coolest thing.

So what do you need? What do you want? Where are you staying and going to anyway? Every single time I get to sit on this beach, no matter how long, no matter how briefly, I imagine staying longer, not leaving, being there indefinitely. Wondering how I can make that happen. Every. Single. Time. And it’s this particular beach. Because I’ve sat on beaches around the world, and I think about this beach even then.

I love New York City. It’s my jam to the ends of the earth. And it costs SO MUCH to live there. I could live there for less, yes. And perhaps I’ll figure out a way to do that. For now it’s reasonable in an unreasonable way, and I can live with that. However this isn’t an indefinite situation, so sometimes I have one eye on that horizon.

If the world didn’t seem so uncertain, if time didn’t seem so short and precious, would it be easier to decide on a place to plant myself? If the world didn’t seem so unpredictable and time so fast and slow, the weather and winds always changing, would it be easier to pack a lighter bag?

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