Every month or so, I pack my life up into a suitcase.

It’s a pretty smooth routine by now. The items I bring with me remain relatively static and everything has its usual place where it always goes.

Sometimes I surprise myself by packing just a little differently and stumbling on a way to save some space, but mostly each packing is the same as the previous.

When it’s not rushed, late at night or early in the morning, the process can be meditative, cathartic even.

That’s because a big part of the packing process is an assessment of each of the things I carry with me, and a decision as to whether I want to carry it with me any more.

Your Relation To Things Changes When You Travel Full-Time

I’ve been traveling full-time for three and a half years now.

I run my company, Counterweight Creative, a podcast production agency from coworking spaces. I go to the office every day, have an apartment, and live life on a pretty much identical schedule to anyone who has a job in any city in the world.

The places, people, cultures and time zones change, but it’s a pretty normal day-to-day life otherwise.

The biggest difference might be the mindset shift around physical things that occurs when you aren’t rooted anywhere. When any acquisition must either be carried with you, or shipped somewhere for pickup, use, and enjoyment at some undetermined, future date in some undetermined, future place.

Undoubtedly, it adds several layers of thought to any purchasing decision. Far more relevant than price become questions like, “Will I use this enough to warrant carrying it around? Will it fit in my luggage? If I get this what will I no longer have room for?”

But beyond the added thought around new acquisitions, the practice of regularly packing your existing possessions produces an opportunity for reflection on what we bring with us and why.

An Expanding Suitcase

Over the years, I expanded my kit from the minimalist essentials I brought with me on a three-month cycle trip of Europe on my first trip, to a minimalist work setup when I first started Counterweight Creative and started traveling full-time.

More recently, I’ve traded in the backpack for rolling luggage, filled out my work setup including laptop stand, keyboard, mouse, fancy noise-canceling headphones, hard-drives, as well as bringing a wider variety of clothing, tools for hobbies, and other comforts.

What Our Things Say About Us

Along with these comforts and necessities, I have a habit of collecting postcards, pamphlets, maps, and brochures from the places I visit. When I first started traveling, I journaled daily and would often use these local finds to cut up and turn my journals into scrapbooks.

I love those old journals, but I haven’t journaled regularly in over two years at this point. Despite that, until recently I continued to add to my collection of loose papers, lugging them across the globe, and with them, the belief that one day I’d take the time to catch up on two years of journaling and scrapbooking.

During a stopover at my Mom’s house recently, I emptied my bag out entirely and was confronted with the 5lb stack of papers.

“Why am I still carrying these around with me?” I asked.

I realized that this random assortment of papers was tied to my idea of who I was.

Scrapbooking and journaling had been central to the way I not only traveled, but lived my life during my first trips, and I hadn’t yet moved on from that version of myself, even though I no longer had the need or desire to continue those practices regularly.

As a result, I was carrying around extra weight that served no purpose towards improving my current life or moving me toward my future goals. A small, even trivial weight to be sure, but who’s to say this wasn’t happening elsewhere.

Pruning Your Possessions

After this realization, I took a new eye to everything else I owned and carried with me, and realized that there were a surprising number of items I was jamming into my pack that were less practical than they were representative of a vision of myself.

I carried books around that I never read, carried my rock climbing shoes around the world for a year and only once ever even looked for a climbing gym. I had keepsakes and mementos from my past and aspirational items that I thought would hold me accountable to some practice or task in the future.

Even with my limited space, I managed to fill the nooks and crannies with stuff that served no purpose in increasing my happiness, often doing the opposite by reminding me of the guilt I had for carrying these things around with me and not making use of them.

I’m grateful that I only have a limited amount of space to fill with these items. But I haven’t always traveled full-time and I won’t live this way forever. I know how easy it can be for the things, the beliefs, the routines, either those from our past or those designed to encourage a future we’re not really that excited about to crowd out the present.

If we’re not careful, our baggage can fill up and take over all our space, physical, emotional, relational and spiritual, leaving no room for the new, for the necessary, for the vital.

My advice is to make a habit of taking stock of your life, your things, your thoughts and ask, “Why am I still carrying this with me?”

If no good reason exists, you might be better leaving it behind.

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