Stuff and things.

 Living a nomadic lifestyle isn't really conducive to owning a lot of things. For most of my life, the majority of my possessions have been somewhere packed away while I wander around. Be it a storage locker, my mother's closet, a friend's basement or my dad's garage- it was kind of a wonder why I even bothered keeping a lot of it in the first place.

When my mother passed I moved out west from Ontario, and most of what I owned was stored in my dad's garage for the first few years. Mostly memorabilia. He loaded up his truck and made the epic journey to come and visit- and bring said things and stuff.


I was pretty excited to finally have everything I owned in the place that I was living. Even though that place was never guaranteed, it was the closest thing I'd ever had to calling a home. It was a tiny farm shack rental- that was often under threat of being repossessed or sold. Every 6 months or so I was looking for a new place. Or a patch of land to park a trailer on.. but anyways.

4 and a half years. That's the longest I had been anywhere. I took a break from The Nomad Lifestyle to try my hand at homesteading. And in the meantime collected all the things. Eventually I was put in a position where I had to make a snap decision to move on. I couldn't handle the heat or the wildfire smoke, my health was failing, and I really missed my family. The anxiety of being stuck in the situation I was in- in the midst of a pandemic- was killing me.

I didn't have a lot of money at the time, and had to very quickly decide what to take with me and what to leave behind. I had it in my head that I would return post pandemic for whatever I couldn't take, but it never happened. I struggled for too long- with my health, my mental state and financially, and I couldn't make it back out there.

I had only enough money to send a few things by mail before I left. Shipping costs from rural British Columbia we're pretty pricey, so I had to be selective. I always think that if I could do it all again I would have chosen differently what to send. I guess you never know In the heat of the moment what will be important down the road. In retrospect, I had no idea where I was going to end up once I flew back east, if or how long I was going to stay, or if I would ever have my own place again to call home.

Now that I've been back a while I realized there were a few things I probably could have done without. And so many things that I thought I wouldn't need or want but wish I would have sent. I left behind all of my sketchbooks, my art, and a few were special gifts from important people in my life. And things I thought I would never have a place for like all of my little kitchen appliances. But what did I know.

My game plan when I left was to stay in a friend's basement until I had enough money to buy a vehicle to live in, or maybe get a place. I never thought I'd have a permanent space, room for storage or a kitchen. Storage lockers are so expensive nowadays I'm not sure I would have bothered this time.

Though I am beyond grateful that I had that basement space available to stay in, I knew I wouldn't thrive staying there forever. But with the cost of living in Canada these days, the likelihood of having my own place was very slim.

I was hoping that once I figured out what I was doing, and which province I was going to make my permanent residence, I would be able to go back for my things. The place that I had it stored in- for reasons beyond our control- was no longer fit to be occupied, so the totes of my belongings were packed into my van and parked on my friends' farm up the road. I couldn't bring the van, because of damage to the frame it would never pass a safety in Ontario, and getting it fixed wasn't an option.

Shortly after I left, the rains came and the floods, and the condensation soaked through all the things. My art, clothes, sketchbooks and photo albums, things that belonged to my mother- it was all subject to the turning of the season. All that I left behind quickly rotted, and a friend that I regrettably burdened with the task of retrieving my stuff had to throw most of it away.

I still struggle with guilt about all of this- my van taking up space, leaving it on my friends, leaving it in general, knowing how much it meant to me over all the years to keep these bits of my personal history. I have to let it go.


At the end of the day, it's just stuff. We can't take it with us beyond this life, and as I learned in my mother's passing, dealing with stuff that belonged to someone- especially someone you care very much about- can be a somewhat traumatic burden. So I'm trying to convince myself that I'm glad it's already done. No one will have to make the difficult decision of what to keep or toss, mother nature did that for us. So many people lose everything to fires and floods and numerous other reasons beyond their control, and I have to be grateful that I had a moment to pick some things to take with me.

It's in the past, and there's nothing I can do about it now. I'm grateful that I had friends that sacrificed the space to store it for so long. I'm thankful that the opportunity was there to return, even though I couldn't. And today I'm thankful that I do have a place to call home. Onward and up.