Moving is My Tiffany’s

*This post originally appeared on my previous blog on March 22, 2015

What is your best therapy?
A bubble bath? A long talk with your mother? Cuddling your cat or dog? Reading your favorite book? Drinking a 75mL “glass” of wine and watching Audrey Hepburn movies?

I think I’ve figured out what my true therapeutic activity is.

Moving.

No, I’m not talking about working out – although that does make me feel refreshed and puts me in a better state of mind. I’m talking about changing my habitation, my residency; carting my things around and always wondering how I have acquired so much stuff.

Sounds relaxing doesn’t it? No, I know it doesn’t. Actually, three of the things I listed above also relax me; except bubble baths, and all baths in general, which freak me out. You sit in dirty water for however long while that water gets cold? No thank you. Also, I don’t have a cat or a dog, but if I did I would find cuddling said domesticated companion extremely relaxing (okay maybe not the cat).

If I’ve lost all of the bubble bath lovers, I am sorry. But now is your time to ask rhetorical, sarcastic questions: I’m about to talk about why moving is therapeutic to me.

In my post-graduate life, I have moved three times over the course of about a year and a half, although it feels like many have passed. To New York, back in with my parents, and now in a new apartment in the Pine Tree Sate. The move away from New York was definitely the toughest, and I can’t wait to move back. But that’s another story.

Each time I’ve moved (yes, even back with my parents), it’s like a new start – it’s refreshing. I get to explore places for the first time or rediscover familiar locations, and especially as an adult, I can take advantage of almost everything that is happening around me. The organizing is also refreshing: where will I hang my pictures and arrange my books? How will I situate this room? Where will I put everything in the kitchen? And so on. When it comes to unpacking my books, I get excited remembering the worlds I’ve traveled and the stories I’ve read within their pages. And although I regret it later, I enjoy getting distracted from unpacking by a book I just want to sit down on my cheap futon and read, or reread at that very moment.

The purging is the next item in this therapeutic wonderland, and although cleaning new places sometimes makes me want to purge, I am talking about getting rid of clutter and things I really don’t need or use anymore. Yes, as a proud pack rat even I can purge my belongings. Clothes are usually the hot ticket item in this category, and really, that’s the only thing I can think of right now that I don’t either hide in a box to take with me or leave at my parent’s house…so we’ll move on.

There’s just something about a new place that makes me excited about life – and at least at this point of my life I’m not sure if I could stand to settle down somewhere that doesn’t require a lease. So sorry mom and dad, who even though they don’t have to, always volunteer their time and vehicles to help me move wherever it is I need to go next. I couldn’t be more grateful for that, since I don’t intend to stop moving for the next few years…or the rest of my life. There’s just so much I desire to see.

In the chance that I do finally find ultimate happiness in one place without the need to go live in another, well then my friend, I will buy some furniture and give the cat a name.