As Time Goes By

When I was a kid, I would look forward to and prepare for vacations to an extreme degree. I would make a paper chain (where you tear off one loop every day and watch the chain dwindle with mounting excitement) sometimes hundreds of days in advance. I would make a detailed list of every individual item I was going to bring with me, then make a separate list to show which things were ready to be packed, then a list for which things were already packed, and then at the end I would cross-check the three lists, finally making one final list of everything I knew was going with me so that I could make sure that everything came back home. I would write out a to-do list for every day during the pre-vacation week so I made sure that nothing would be bungled last-minute (I was really into lists...). I would make sure that my room was completely spotless and everything was in order before I left, so I could come back to a distinct lack of chaos. On departure day itself, I would be up by 5am (even if the plane didn't leave till 4pm, like on England trips) so I could be ready and showered, allowing time to deal with unanticipated emergengcies. I was always an advocate of getting to the airport 4+ hours early. Why the hell wouldn't you?

In college and in my youngun SF life, I relaxed a bit. Last year, the night before an England trip, I began giving thought to what to bring with me at around 2:45am, and realizing that nothing I owned was even remotely clean, I trekked back and forth to the (mercifully existent) 24-hour laundromat on 20th and SVN (sketch!) a couple times, after which I watched the entirety of She's Having a Baby before actually packing anything.

Here in Rwanda, it seems that I've entered my second childhood. My southern Africa trip has been anticipated with a 100-day-long paper chain. I made an itemized to-bring list about three weeks ago and spent a good amount of time honing it carefully until a final list emerged triumphant last weekend. I had a to-do list every day this week. Yesterday, I couldn't help it - I completely packed my bag, fully 48 hours in advance of departure for a four-hour flight. I am now spending my final day here making my house completely spotless, so I'll be returning at the end of this month to something approximating a museum exhibit of my Rwanda life.

It's been kind of fun to relive my anal-retentive childhood days in the lead-up to this trip, but I think that's mainly because I had little else to do these two weeks. I'm going to look at this as the death throes of my insane need for organization. Next vacation, I'm looking forward to chucking a random selection of rumpled clothes into the nearest available backpack five minutes before liftoff and heading, carefree, out the door.