The Story Behind The Name

Home Is Where The Suitcase Is.For over a year, I’ve kept the secret behind the name to myself. I knew when I first started thinking of ways to bring my crazy dream into reality that I wanted to have a blog to document my journey. It needed to be unique, to tell a story. After weeks of playing with generic names that didn’t feel right, I thought I was toast. My first major decision and I couldn’t figure it out. I scrapped the list, cried for a couple minutes, and told myself that when the time was right, I would jump in.Now I’d love to say that the name came to me in a dream, or that I was just walking one day and the universe showed me a sign. But alas, the name came to me in the same spot most of my other brilliant ideas come to me.The shower.A modern take on the classic adage, the name was perfect. Especially when you considered that the story behind it was mine and mine alone. I wasn’t trying to mimic someone else or use a formula that absolutely worked; I was just going to do my best and see what happened. 

So what the hell is the name story?

From the time I was 11, I’ve had two houses. And not in the fun summer-vacation-home sense of the word. I mean, I spent three nights at one house, would pack up my stuff, spend four at the other. Rinse and repeat.I lovingly and jokingly refer to it as Divorced Parents Syndrome (DPS for short).For the first few years, it was rough. It felt like everything I needed was at the other parent’s house -- clothes, textbooks, you name it. I was convinced that my possessions had grown legs for the sole purpose of walking to the place I didn’t need them to be.And I struggled. Boy, did I struggle. A couple months ago, I had a dream where I was playing the Cowardly Lion in the Wizard of Oz again but no one told me I was playing him until my scene was about to come on. So I dreamt that I walked into my place (behind a tree) with my script in hand, frantically trying to memorize the lyrics to my solo in the thirty seconds before my cue.It felt like that.

My face when I realized I didn't have any photos with Maggie...

Maggie

From the ages of 15 to 20, my pride and joy was an ‘04 Chevy Classic named Maggie. She was my first car. More than that, she was my first anything. She was the first thing I owned. But what I loved more than the idea of having something that was well and truly mine was having a safe place for all my things.My laptop? Lived in my car.Karate gear? Had its own bin in the trunk.Textbooks? Change of clothes? Half the shoes I own? I didn’t need to look any further than the backseat.It drove my parents crazy. But, for the first time in four years, I didn’t forget things at the other house. I never needed to deal with the anxiety of not having what I needed. Granted, I could get a ride to the other parent’s house, but that wasn’t the point. Now, everything was at my fingertips.Who sits in the backseat of a car anyways? 

The Evolution

It was only when I got to college and had to physically move everything I cared about to a new city that I realized how much superfluous stuff I had. Before I moved to Boston, I did a massive clean-out. Like, I think I donated half my closet. Massive.It meant that I only had the things I cared about with me always. I didn’t want to be spread out between three places. So instead, I moved to one.Boston.The one downside to this plan was that, every semester, it would feel like I was packing up my life into bins and suitcases to go home or back to campus.On two separate occasions, I actually packed up a suitcase and flew across the ocean.By the time I finished school, it had become my lifestyle. Completely second nature. My suitcases were with me at all times and wherever I set them down was where home was because everything I owned was in them.

These suitcases have taken me from Boston to London and back again

I suspect that a lot of my friends think I’m crazy. Not that that’s a bad thing or a judgment on them. I likely am. One of my life goals right now is to be able to fit all the things that matter to me in two suitcases so I can bring them around the world.To be able to pack up the things that make home home. And bring it anywhere.Everywhere.