Some might say that I’m a perfectionist. Others might say that I’ll just never be happy no matter what. Personally, I prefer the term, “perpetual furniture mover.” I come from a long line of “perpetual furniture movers.” You’d come downstairs one Saturday, and the entire living room would be different – now the chair is in the corner, the couch is against the wall, the lamp is…is it in the same spot or a different spot? You can never be sure. Wasn’t everything fine the way it was?

It should go as no surprise that I had to get rid of a lot of stuff in order to make this move possible. I was moving from a house in Atlanta to an apartment in Manhattan. I would be trading in a porch for a fire escape, a driveway for a stoop.

“Does it feel real yet?” “I think so?” I scanned my much emptier home. One stack of boxes sat in the furthest corner, the other behind me. I had been in this house for seven years now, which in the time of typical early-to-mid-20’s apartment hopping felt like a lifetime.