Yes, I am driving a van full of nothing but old poetry...

So, the impending move is hanging over my head like some kinda dark storm cloud of doom. Sometimes it makes it a little difficult to breathe. I still have so much to do, and I am terribly overwhelmed by the amount of stuff I have. Who needs this much stuff?

Right now my world is full of lasts. Last lunch or dinner with so and so. Last trip to the Met. Last Broadway show. Last happy hour. As if I'm dropping off the face of the earth instead of down the coast three and a half hours. I can't complain; I encourage it. I love a sense of occasion. Though I find it amazing how many tried and true traditions I've developed in a little over a year and a half.

Really, my problem is paper. I hoard papers- maybe it's the writer thing. But I have boxes of papers I might want to scrapbook one day, boxes of old notes and readings from every scholarly institution I've ever attended that I refuse to throw away, boxes of notebooks full of scribblings- I think I have story outlines dating back to middle school and perhaps beyond. I'm pretty sure, at this point, that I'm not going to write those stories anymore. Isn't it time to throw this stuff away?

I mean, if I ever do make it big, future researchers will love to get their hands on my Juvenilia. "Look at this poem Yates wrote when she was seven!" (Yes, I have some of those, too). Though, with the kind of novels I want to write, I doubt anyone's going to be interested in the great vault of old writings I'll have amassed by the time of my death.

So I'll just haul my papers from town to townn and one day someone can have a big old bonfire.

Back to packing.