Shed The World

I’m a stuff person, and I come from stuff people, we hold onto memories, there are physical pictures, items handed down, scribbles on paper, old calendars, tiny commemorative spoons, obituaries meticulously cut from local papers. There’s a danger in the stuff, there’s a danger in the past, too much of is suffocating, it just builds and builds until we bury ourselves. My dad did that, the house I grew up in, once we left, just got more and more full. He had a path to a beach chair in the corner on the first floor with a phone next to it, another path into the kitchen, and one up to his bedroom. Thank god he died before Costco.

A few years of COVID in our apartment brought more in than out. Our apartment was big enough to fill more. But when are we full? I’ve moved the same records from the middle of the country to the left coast, back to the middle and now the east coast, this one is my fourth apartment in New York. I worked in music, I love a vinyl promo, I love a weird esoteric album, give me a reissue, send me your small town’s psychedelic freakout from the guy who works at the gas station. I’ll keep it forever. Is that 7” single actually a puzzle? I’ll buy two.

Something about this move was a cleansing one, we had time, definitely too much, and the apartments on the market have less space. We hired movers, something I did for the first time two moves ago, the great epiphany of my life, that I work to make money to happily pay someone else to move my belongings. Hearing quotes really pushed me to get rid of more. I didn’t want the stuff to dictate where I could live, that we needed a big place to hold it all, and that place would be nowhere near a train. I had conversations with records, wondering if I could live without Joan Jett, we’ve been roommates for decades. I kept her, but I did evict all of the Kiss records, except for the solo albums. I consigned an awesome 8 track collection I was not listening to, filled with of Roxy Music, Nina Simone, David Bowie, Lou Reed. Everything viable went to Deep Cuts Record Store, our local, and every time Brandon posts one of my records, I swoon a bit, that he likes it, that it will find a new home. Farewell At The Drive-In/Sunshine split 12” on pink vinyl.

Nothing I kept and collected was an affectation, it came from an earnest place. The impetus to my koozie collection was seeing a commemorative one from a wedding my sister and mom attended some time in the early 1990s. I was enamored with this very casual, lowbrow takeaway for something that probably cost thousands and thousands of dollars. Koozies are great keepsakes, they’re cheap, they’re light, they’re cheeky or maybe a little classy. For my 30th birthday, I made one to observe the day. My sister, who had wholesale connections, got 210 made for my sidewalk party. That’s where the price break was, she insisted, otherwise the cost per piece went up a lot.

All these things, these interests, the carbon steel American-made knives, the old country and Shaker cookbooks, the koozies, the 8-tracks, the beer signs, the liquor decanters, the heavy metal t-shirts, they represent moments, places I’ve lived, where I am from, people I left, and people and places I’ve lost. They weren’t just kitschy things to bring along, they were my interests, but also a way to signify who I was, what I was interested in.

I felt the tug of parting ways with many items- the Dead Boys 8-track with a note from me on a mailing label to my friend who worked at Reckless Records—Jolene-save for Millicent forever. I tried to prove to myself, just two weeks ago, that I didn’t care about it so I didn’t even take a picture of it.¹ Letting go happens in layers, I’m not ready to part with the Aphex Twin 12”/10”/7” on green vinyl packaged in a plastic bag ot Jay-Z’s Grey Album DLP bootleg, but maybe in the future. I have to keep a little in the record bank, if you know what I mean. The framed photograph of a shirtless Ozzy Osbourne holding a machine gun, hiding behind a house plant, I considered keeping, a gift from an old roommate for my 40th birthday.

One of my biggest takeaways from this time is how transactional I can become. This is not positive. My impulse was to sell everything, that the internet has made it easy. We could sell it all to make money for the move, the furniture, the clothes, but then I’d on Facebook, which I haven’t missed in the past decade, or starting an eBay store, something I have no interest in doing. So we gave it away (minus the records), dropping all the various things off to different non-profits. I’m better for it. It’s more fun to put all the weird stuff into the world to be found. There’s a levity to the freedom of not caring.

In her February 6, 2026 essay Attention is a Muscle, Alicia Kennedy writes “I’m making ritual of my attention and by doing so, I’m strengthening it.” I’ve been trying to do the same my entire adult life. That’s why these possessions must go, to help me keep the thread. Moving demands intention, until we’re at the last hour before the movers show up, just putting whatever’s in from to us into a trash bag to bring along. I’m trying to ensure what I pay attention to, now, is also serving me.

There’s something about this specific move that is different from others. I used to move often, jumping from open room to open room every few months in Chicago for years. Part of it is having a partner, another part is making a home, that the idea of home has changed for me. Home used to be a place to run away from, to barely be at. Another factor is my age, how I have changed over the past few years. I’m staring down my future more than I ever have. I understand how I need to read, how I need to write, that I can’t spend my time out as much as I used to. It’s not the clock ticking, it’s not my own mortality, but it’s definitely the passage of time, knowing that we only have so many hours in the day. All these beautiful, strange things that used to make me have done their work. I don’t need them, they’ll go on to do something for someone else. I don’t dismiss them. I commend them. In parting with all of these things, there’s always a pull, a moment where I almost keep it, (Ozzy Osbourne framed photo) but let go. If I listen to all the astrological posts, I’m in a real transformational period, and if I listen to the guy at the moving company, there’s only so much space in the truck.

They’re both right.

1. That was a mistake.