Letting Go

I'm sure most of you know by now that over the past 5 months we've been looking to move. There are/were a number of reasons that I won't get into here but one of them was that prices on homes were dropping. We could now move somewhere where we never could have afforded before.

In preparation for that eventual move the purging began. I had changed jobs 10 months ago and had switched from working primarily out of the house and travelling all over the United States to now going into an office. When one works out of the house in a technical role, geek things accumulate, these things include computers, servers, circuit boards and literally tons of technical manuals. When one works out of the house and travels, other things accumulate, suitcases, frequent flier cards, airline statements, travel coupons, and the list goes on.

I've been trying to clear these things out with most of it going into the garbage. Today, I sit and stare at a stack of United 1K systemwide confirmed upgrades. For those of you uninformed, these practically guarantee you a first class upgrade no matter the flight length. One used these when flying to NY or Florida. They were like gold. It's hard to let them go. It took a lot of pain and suffering for both for me and my spouse to earn these. They are paper. Beautiful pieces of paper that used to sell on ebay for $ 100 but are now worth nothing. I'm sad.

But alas, better things have come. I'm tired of business travel and am thrilled not to be doing it anymore in this post 9-11 world but it is still hard to let go. Well, off to the shredder I go. They are after all only things and things are not memories.