The Five Stages of Packing to Move

For most of the last eleven years, I have lived in Newport News, Virginia. I went to college at Christopher Newport University, graduated with a master’s degree in teaching, and then began work the following fall at a local high school. In that time, I have lived in eleven different places (counting the dorms), which has made me a veritable expert on the packing and moving. As I prepare to move to North Carolina and take the next big step in my life, I am again reminded of all the wonders that moving brings, like the “can I fit that in my car?” challenge, or the decisions about whether or not I like ____ enough to make it worth packing and lugging to a new place. And of course, there is my personal favorite game: “can these make a meal? I don’t want to move food. Scrambled eggs and Brussel sprouts are probably fine together.” As much fun as the whole packing things is, the tediousness of the task can only be described as a process.

Stage 1: Denial

“I’m not moving until the end of the month, and it is only the 20th! I have plenty of time.”

In the first stage of moving, there is plenty of time for everything. No need to rush when you have nearly a fortnight left to transfer all of your stuff to a new place. This is when you “plan” how you are going to pack the copious amounts of junk that you have acquired since your arrival in your current living situation. About this time, you also begin to really think about how daunting the task will really be; a fact which you promptly put out of your mind since that is an issue that future you will have to worry about. Sucks to be future you!

Three Jobs Everyone Should Work

I started working for someone other than my parents when I was 14 years old and got a job doing whatever my neighbor’s dad was doing at the time. Since that time, I have probably worked for about ten different companies doing all sorts of things to ensure that I had the money to pay my bills and live comfortably.  Yesterday, I went to a job fair in Raleigh (a little bit of a bust unless I wanted to sell cell phones or insurance) and as I drove the three and a half hours home, I had time to reflect on what I have learned from each job that I’ve worked. As I reflected, I realized that there are three types of jobs in particular that have shaped how I interact with workers on a daily basis. I believe that if everyone at worked these jobs at some point in their lives, it would yield a much more calm and understanding community of people who are more genuine when they say “have a good one” before leaving a store.

1. Serving

The Job: I have served in environments ranging from high class restaurants to casual bars and have found one commonality in all my serving jobs: sometimes customers are jerks. In every place that I have worked, servers make just enough money on their paychecks to cover the taxes that have to be paid; if you aren’t making tips, then you aren’t actually making money. So many things can slow a server down, from the kitchen making a mistake on an order because they are overwhelmed to a hostess double (or triple) seating you; that is giving you multiple new tables at the same time. I have only ever worked in one restaurant that had strict “sections;” an area in which all your tables are sat so that they are conveniently located near each other. In the other places that I have worked, my tables could have been anywhere in the restaurant. If a table on one side of the restaurant needs ranch for their fries, a table on the other side of the restaurant just got sat and needs their drink order taken, and the food just dropped for the table upstairs, it is easy to find the weeds.

The Three Things It Took Me Years to Realize that I Learned From My Little Brother’s Death

First off, apologies for another late Wednesday post; the personal gravity of my topic this week has caused me to spend a lot more time planning, editing, and revising (PDREPing, as it were). This post is something that I feel inclined to share, especially given the emotions and feelings that I know many of my friends are currently experiencing. There is also the fact that yesterday my little brother, Alex, would have turned 27. It’s been just over eleven years since he died in February of my senior year of high school. Being a stereotypical man who invented the wheel and built the Eiffel Tower out of metal and brawn, I bottled up a lot of the things I was experiencing at that point, so I am still processing them to this day. I attempted to throw this stuff in a list, but so many of the feelings and ideas are intertwined that it became complicated to differentiate the points. So I guess you should hold onto your butts, because here we go…

I promise there will be no Velociraptors…this time.

1. No Matter Your Age, Death Ages You Further

I was seventeen years old when my brother died in a car accident. I can tell you almost all the details about that day from the CD I was listening to in the car (Powerman 5000…leave me alone, I was in high school) to how long I was in class before being pulled out (less than fifteen minutes) to the way my little brother looked in the hospital. I wasn’t allowed to see him until after my parents arrived at the hospital, despite the fact that I got there almost an hour before them. I still remember what I was told by my father and a coach that I respected greatly: this has made you a man.

It sounds melodramatic, but was more than a bit true. I forced myself into a stoic portrait of all the manliest men that I had seen in movies and on TV. You know the scene in which a man turns from a situation and the camera catches a single tear fall from his eye? That is what 17 year old me thought I was doing. That also meant reading a eulogy at my brother’s funeral, acting like I was not destroyed by the situation, and bottling away all shows of emotion that I could possibly hide. It wasn’t until I arrived at college that I realized how much I really had been changed by the situation. I certainly don’t claim that I was the model of maturity throughout my college years, but I felt as though I carried an extra weight throughout those years. My ability to compartmentalize the situation helped me, but not everyone is me…