Year in 22kgs
Pack up; Unpack; Repeat
As I pulled down my travel bags from the top shelf of cupboard, a gloomy sensation started to kick in. It is time to pack up and leave, yet again. This constant moving has now officially become part of my life, no matter how much I despise it. I didn’t even realise when I became a ‘khanabadosh (ख़ानाबदोश)’. Nonetheless, here I am, packing one more time to move to a different house that will become my address for next few months.
It all started at the beginning of last year when the place I was staying in got sold out forcing me to move out before my tenure ended. Around the same time, a part of my team relocated to a different city. This gave me an opportunity to choose where I wanted to be and I opted for remote work. In my mind, things were aligning for good. I didn’t travel as much as I should have in my college days and would feel left out hearing other people’s ‘vacay’ stories. In my defence, life rarely gave me the opportunity. Every time, at least one of the 3 — budget, responsibilities or time would spoil the equation. Now that workcation was officially an option, I decided to make most out of it.
I convinced myself and people around me that there was no point for me to stick to a place as I would anyways connect with my team online, whether or not I work from office. If online communication is what it will be, I could simply work from anywhere and use my room rent as travel budget. It wasn’t an impulsive decision. I calculated everything from cost to safety from myself and my belongings to possibility of unpleasant experiences. In all of this, I missed calculating one important factor —Inertia.
In February, my first destination became my hometown, a safe & familiar place where I could stay as long as I like, or so I thought. Little did I realise that the comfort of your family around, home cooked food and school time friends will be the handcuffs difficult to escape. I did over-extend my stay but somehow every place has a way to remind that you need to leave.
In next set of months, I went to 4 different states, desperately trying to make my plan work. When you are at home, a bubble of comfort is created around you. Most of us only realise that once we step out of that and face the world without sunscreen on. Few weeks into this and I was no longer searching for places with picturesque views or good weekend getaways anymore. For me, the practical considerations took over. In my stay search criteria, place with good laundry options laddered up in priority list, just below the security considerations for my belongings. I mean no one would like to lose their work laptop while working remotely. Online orders became a mess. I would have to make sure that delivery date align with my duration of stay. I got exhausted way too soon.
But in all of this, I learnt a few things. When you are constantly on the move, you are almost forced to adopt a minimalistic lifestyle. Since you cannot carry everything, hard prioritisation is needed. Thumb rule being, for whatever you carry, its value should be more than its weight. For me, I had to settle for the limit of 22kgs in 2 bags. While it was to accommodate for flight baggage limit (In India, most flights have limit of 15kgs check-in luggage and 7kgs cabin luggage), it also became a cutline helping me prioritise things I actually need. I would only buy a pair of jeans when there was something else ready to be discarded. I would always keep 2 books along and whenever I was done reading, I had to find someone who was willing to take them before I buy a new one. Also, with this limit, moving became slightly easy. Need to find another place as the stay I booked cancelled the reservation at last moment? No problem, I can move around with 2 bags.
That being said, burnout was evident. Combine the need to find a new place with a conflicting important meeting and things become tricky. The weekends I imagined I’d end up roaming were getting spent planning for the next phase of journey. As a designer, we need some time to sit down, decompress and think. I wasn’t getting any of it. I was losing out on important stuff.
It took me few months of flying unknown skies to realise that I’d rather be a tree rooted to the ground. But as life has it, it still hasn’t ended the adventure for me. As I’m packing in hope to make my next destination a permanent home, the learnings I’m taking are valuable than the luggage. Afterall, 22kgs isn’t that heavy to carry along.
