East Atlanta Village

I was able to do the entire process of renting an apartment in Atlanta from Florence, Italy. My friend Debbie works in real estate and sent a video of a nice little garage apartment in a highly desirable area of town, East Atlanta Village, aka EAV. Cheap enough to allow me to wander, too. Still, it’s really weird for me to “land”.

I hit the ground running when I got here. Movers scheduled from Italy, all deposits paid via an app, Wi-Fi arranged. Moved all the stuff out of my storage space on November 1st, only to turn around the next day and pay someone to take it all away.

Travel changed the way I view “stuff” - and how much I want to have fewer things. When you travel, you basically have only whatever your brought with you and I got used to that. There were times that my small rolling suitcase and backpack felt like too much. When I started to unpack all the things I brought with me from California, panic set in. In this very small apartment I saw myself maniacally moving things from one place to another, it was impossible to find a place for all the STUFF. I guess you could say I had a bit of a meltdown. 

What became abundantly clear to me was the state of mind I was in when I packed my house up in Los Angeles. I could see that I didn’t trust the abundance of life. The things that I thought I needed or that meant something to me now just seemed like useless junk. I was clinging to my California life via piles of things - and it’s not the way I want to live. 

I wanted to become untethered from things. When I first started this blog, that was my goal. I asked myself with each item “what is the purpose of this?”. Things without purpose for me went into the pile and the next day, I paid to make the pile go away. I felt the guilt of filling the landfills, hoped that someone could find use for some of the items, and vowed to learn from this mistake. I could hear my mom and my dad in my head saying “don’t let these things weigh you down”. I think this hardcore purging is called Swedish Death Cleaning. The last thing I want when I leave this world is to burden my loved ones with my possessions.

In looking over the pile, I could see how so many of the things I kept were because other people expected me to. Even if it wasn’t my taste. I won’t live like this anymore. I will learn the art of gracefully saying “no, thank you” when well-wishers try to give me things. 

I don’t want WEIGHT. Friends were saying things like “you should get a cat” and I think of pets as weight. I love animals but prefer to enjoy my friend’s pets. I feel a similar way about children.