A case for the semi-nomadic life

What if moving was *not* the end of the world

In the past fifteen years, I have moved sixteen times.

And yes, I am okay.

Whenever I announce I am moving again, people tend to look at me with a gentle pity.

Perhaps it's a projection, perhaps it’s because they say moving is more stressful than divorce, something that feels absurd for me to even comprehend, but I suppose I don’t know the feeling of packing up a life, settled deep into the recesses of a single home for decades or more, with a whole family to go along with it.

Either, moving is stressful and I’m just used to it or it’s just not that stressful to me, during this season of my life.

And yet, even writing this, I imagine readers shaking their heads, ready to throw up arms and disagree.

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I’m definitely not a minimalist.

Both my work and hobbies require stuff.

Bolsters and blankets and yoga blocks and mats and sheepskins and candles and an overflowing box full of incense. Glass jars filled with herbs. Medical mushroom. Tea. Notebooks. Ring light. Microphones. Webcams.

I am an (over) enthusiastic cook, so naturally, I have various types of dried seaweeds and mushrooms, cooking wines and vinegar and spices for curries, nuts and seeds. There’s the donabe and the rice cooker and the Extremely Precious coffee and tea equipment collected from Japan, over a decade or more.

Oh and books.

So many books.

While staring at my whole life in boxes, something I’m no stranger to, it always looks like a lot. But compared to what it might be, had I settled somewhere longer than two years, had I really sunk my roots deep into the earth, it just doesn’t feel like it.

I always think to myself: well, it *would* be so much more.

If I knew I was going to stay.

But I haven’t had that feeling.

Not just yet, anyway.