before i left california...

“you never know how much stuff you have until you have to move” - this is a common saying that you’ll hear people say when they are about to move from one place to another and see the hassle of transporting all this stuff.

for me, since i didn’t know how long i would end up staying in egypt, “moving to egypt” meant that i had to virtually empty my apartment in california.  of course at this point i had three options - 1.  take everything with me - being an international flight, a limit of two bags, etc, this was impractical.  2.  put stuff in storage - possible, but do i really need this stuff, and is there anything worth putting in storage?  or 3.  take what you need up to the limit and get rid of the rest.

i decided to go with 3.  and so i went from a huge amount of stuff that would fit into a small uhaul truck down to two checked in bags, a carry on bag, and a laptop bag.  this meant parting with things i loved (video games, consoles, books, car, etc) and taking only the most important things.

this whole concept was a good reminder to me that no matter how much you accumulate, when you die, you take nothing with you except your deeds.