Today I started packing. Where you get to try and find boxes all over town just to realize that they aren't large enough. Where you go through a roll of tape about every minute. Not necessarily because of closing up boxes but more importantly because it keeps sticking to itself or you. In college we learn the art of moving. We can fit a whole room into a four door car and still find room for food from a pick up window. Who needs to see through the rear view mirrors anyways? We move from home to dorm, back to home, to a different dorm, to apartment, to place of internship, and the list goes on. We become professionals and have a better understanding how to fit shirts, CDs, towels, and DVDs in a box more than what we learned in class the previous sememster.

Graduation rolls around and we grab our lambskins, say our goodbyes, and pack up a U-haul one more time. When packing we realize there will be times in the future where we will move again, but it is our hopes that it is now kept to a minimal. Next week I pack one more time, this time it will be longer. I've actually signed a 15 month lease and am more committed by acquiring such state documents like driver’s license and tags. I have setup utilities under my name and will be a customer to a new bank. Connecticut for life is not the likely outcome, but then again who knows where I'll end up. My mindset now is the one I wish I had back in December. I have wondered if I was to go back in time would this outcome have been different. I can say the result would have been the same. It's through these trials and tribulations that we discover our path and gain some insight in the process.

After tub after tub of clothes (while having too many I'm too reluctant to let any go) I came across the drawer. The photo drawer. It’s filled with envelopes, but not the one with a stamp on the upper right hand corner of a duck or American flag. They are yellow, green, white, and blue and are from friends such as Eckerds, Walgreens, and Wal-Mart. Inside these envelopes is a key to a time machine that takes me back a few months to several years. Surprisingly the thought of modern travel came across my mind.

Before 1900 you lived close or with your family. Mass transportation was just beginning to take shape with the locomotive and decades later concrete snakes would span across this great nation due to the automobile. You might have wanted to leave town and establish roots elsewhere, but you would never have been too far from home. At 23 I am now about to live in my fifth state. I am thousands of miles away from the people who have given me guidance and helped shape the person I am today. A century ago I would have been a horse ride away.

I received an email from my sister out in Idaho. Attached were my photos of my niece Emma and nephew Bennett. Emma is darling or so I hear. I've seen her only a few times and while she was a beautiful baby I haven't seen her walk or seen her bubbly personality that I hear about. Bennett the newest addition is a child I haven't even seen and can only wonder when. I can only wish the best and for now I will see them through pictures.

"There was nothing in the world
that I ever wanted more
than to never feel the breaking apart.
All my pictures of you." ~ The Cure