I need a magic genie

In the movie, “Up in the Air,” George Clooney’s character gives motivational speeches about living a lifestyle that allows him to be nimble and not tied to anything. He tells seminar participants to imagine putting all of their belongings and possessions into a backpack, and then trying to stand up and walk with all that on their backs. The key, Clooney suggests, is to limit the amount of things that go into the backpack.

Of course, the movie also reveals that Gorgeous George’s lifestyle leads him to be a non-committal social icebox who is incapable of developing meaningful relationships. But anyone who has ever moved homes, which is to say everyone, knows that, at some level, Clooney isn’t entirely wrong. And for people like us who will be literally limited to a backpack worth of things, the question “why do I have so much crap?” is a frequently asked one.

Before we leave, I have to cancel the following:

• Lease;
• Health insurance;
• Renter’s insurance;
• Car insurance;
• Internet;
• Amazon Prime;
• Gym membership (anyone who has seen me shirtless knows how valuable this was to me);
• Spotify;
• Online filter thing that blocked spam;
• Plugin for online filter thing that blocked spam that let in some spam I wanted to see after all, like fat cat videos.

And none of that even exists physically! It’s just stuff with which I’m associated. And then I have a car, furniture, gadgets, wife. Maybe I’ll keep the wife. If I had kids, pets, property, I can’t imagine how long that above list would be, let alone the physical things. Sometimes, maybe it’s not that we don’t have enough, it’s that we have so much we can’t fit in anything else.

Fifteen more days until we leave Hawaii. Twenty-five more days until we go to China.