Back to basics

Since I can remember I have lived my life with the expectation of staying in a given city for no more than about 2-4 years. There is so much world to discover, and so little time. Turns out I just finished a stint of 8 years in Bordeaux and then 6 years in Paris, so both of those were longer than expected. I ended up getting French citizenship so I suppose 14 years total in France was fair :). As I began to prepare for my sabbatical year, I looked around for a storage box to store my stuff in over the year. It was quite a bit more expensive than I was expecting - at least 140€/month for something that would have held most of my accumulated stuff. I started thinking about the value/quality of the stuff and came to a realisation - while I spent a lot more than the 1600€+ it would cost to replace the stuff new, in resale value (so selling it on ebay/leboncoin), I probably wouldn't get much more for it than that. And if some crazy person offers me a job and I decide to stay in China for another year, or more? At some point I would have to fly back to Paris, empty the box and then fly back to China. So that would probably bump the cost up to 2500€+ (minimum), and make the decision of whether to stay that much harder. Knowing you are going to be heading (probably) far away also guided my purchasing decisions quite a bit - why buy something nice that will last a long time if you are not going to be able to take it with you?

So I decided to give away everything I wasn't taking to friends, colleagues or charity. Most of my stuff was going to go to Emmaüs, an organisation set up a little after the war in France and now present in a few countries around the world. Emmaüs was set up by a former Resistance fighter/ abbot - Abbé Pierre to help the homeless and others who had lost hope and a reason to live. Unfortunately, they had one of the removal vans break down and my appointment got cancelled at the last minute... Thankfully, my building superintendent was able to ask around and managed to find a home for pretty much everything - fridge, washing machine, oven... and everything else!

I reduced my life to basically 50kgs of clothing and some light electronics. My life has been predominantly online for the last few years, and will no doubt be even more so in the future. The souvenirs that I had picked up along the way that were only interesting for me had photos taken of them and went in the recycling (where possible). Photos got digitised and thrown out, as did all but a few of my huge piles of official documents. I kept my degrees and the odd bank document - the rest is in online storage in digital form (and in two copies on external hard drives - I am a geek and I know to keep my redundant backups!).

I decided to take (at least) the year off from geeking about year ago so I had plenty of time to come to terms with the move, and relieve myself of my accumulated stuff. The more I got rid of and the more I projected myself into my year in China, the easier it became. In reality, most of the clothes I kept were things I haven't worn much for the last 4 years - suits, dress shirts/shoes, ski jacket and trousers. Most people would be jealous of having a pretty well-paying job and getting to come to work in a t-shirt, jeans and trainers. I want to wear a suit for a while!

One of the reasons I tried to move from development/admin into Email Deliverability 7 years ago was to interact with a different crowd than the other "basement dwellers" (of which I am definitely one!) and to go to "business meetings" with clients. I have always liked putting myself in a range of different contexts to see how I can adapt and that applies to both countries/languages and groups within society. Now I won't be wearing a suit to classes at university but I definitely want to have a nice one if I decide to start interviewing towards the end of the year, or if some business opportunity pops up while I'm there :-).

What was left on the last day (in addition to the two suitcases) :-)