Moving is a Pain in the Ass

on making space for what comes next.

I encountered a ghost this week.

My limited knowledge of ghost sightings, based on very scientific accounts from the likes of the Discovery Channel and Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, made it seem like ghosts are always of another era, wearing nightgowns and carrying lanterns like it’s 1784. But this ghost looked pretty contemporary, down to her leather biker jacket.

I remember that jacket. It was heavy, constricting, made an irritating squeak with every move. I bought it on the heels of a breakup, heartbreak blurring the part where it was well beyond my budget and at least a size too small. I was shopping for the person I wanted to be — someone tough and together, someone I struggled to embody.

Now, I see, I was in the market for armor. I was searching in the wrong place.

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Didion famously wrote that we are “well-advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not.”

Over the past week, as my home has devolved into chaos as I prep for our impending move, I’ve thought of this quote a few dozen times. And here is where I’ve landed: Nodding terms are nothing compared to packing terms.

In the backs of closets, in jumbled drawers, I’ve uncovered people I barely recognize, let alone remember being. I’ve beheld shoes with soles so stacked and precarious I wondered not only who bought such a thing but where on Earth she was going. Cards and notes drop out of books like fallen leaves, ghostly bookmarks bearing messages from figures of my past.

At every turn, I find another player in the parade of former selves. I laugh. I cringe. I put my hand to my neck, like a Victorian clutching her pearls. I furrow my brow in confusion.

Come to think of it, I have yet to nod at any of them. Any minute now.

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Cheryl Strayed wrote an oft-quoted Dear Sugar column (those familiar will know it as “the ghost ship”), in which she counsels a reader who is on the fence about having a child.

“And yet, there remains my sister life. All the other things I could have done instead… I’ll never know and neither will you of the life you don’t choose. We’ll only know that whatever that sister life was, it was important and beautiful and not ours. It was the ghost ship that didn’t carry us. There’s nothing to do but salute it from the shore.”

It can be seductive to consider our own sister lives, the ghosts who made different choices and took different paths. Maybe one is a rock star, I muse. Or a scientist. Or a chef. They have advanced degrees and pink hair and big families. Their paths diverge behind me, fanning out from junctures I didn’t take.

Ghosts are so often painted as visitors from the past, harbingers of haunting and nostalgia. But what about the ghosts of the future, those spirits of possibility and potential? What about the ships — infinite and varied — floating on the horizon, waiting to ferry us to what lies ahead?

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This particular move comes with the added challenge that we are downsizing. Some of these selves will make the journey, wrapped gently in tissue and nestled somewhere safe, like the memories they conjure. Others will need to go.

In many ways, this is a welcome change, as I’m tired of feeling beholden to the tyranny of stuff. (With the exception of books. I will schlep a library’s worth wherever I go, strained muscles be damned.) I am ready to be lighter, unencumbered.

At first, I tried to stream organizing shows in the background as I packed — Get Organized with the Home Edit, with its cheerful rainbow curation and planetary crisis worth of transparent plastic bins, and Tidying Up with Marie Kondo. But nothing landed.

The presentation felt so material, so transactional. Even Marie Kondo, whose book title purports that tidying up is nothing short of life-changing magic, seemed overshadowed by the American cycle of “buy and toss and store.”

Does it spark joy?, I find, is too simple a question. Joy doesn’t always come to the party alone. Does it spark rage or regret or nostalgia? Does it spark something akin to a campfire or a Fourth of July fireworks display? A remembering or a revolution? Does it spark anything at all?

I’ve found this realm of cleaning and considering — decluttering, as the pros would say — to be deeper. Like so many everyday acts, it has a spiritual side. It is an exorcism. A reclaiming. An act of definition and revision.

In making space, I clear a path for the ghosts who are yet to be.

 *

The classic metaphor finds our incarnations neatly housed within us, cozy as a matryoshka doll. Layers of an onion, rings of a tree. But sometimes I feel them buzzing around me, a formidable team. They urge me along, like a studio audience that’s all too invested in the outcome.

There are the ghosts of the people I’d rather forget, and the ones I wish I could reprise. There are ghosts cloaked in silver linings, bearing the unexpected goodness of paths I didn’t want, didn’t choose, didn’t see coming. The ghosts of who I became after loss, after trauma, after pain. The people I never set out to be, but have come to like all the same.

I hold these truths to be self-evident: Moving is a colossal pain in the ass. It is also an act of hope.

Every box I fill is a gift for the ghost who will unpack it on the other side. Though we may be but days apart, she is a person who knows more, who takes a different view than I could today. I’m excited to greet her.

I tried to get Gnocchi to pose for a similar photo, but she took it as an exercise in demonstrating her deft ability to leap out of containers. So here is a dog who is not my dog, but is still very cute.

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I was honored to be featured on

Amelia Wilson

’s wonderful newsletter, Some Happy Scribbles, last week.

She asked such thoughtful questions about my daily practices, spending habits, favorite advice, and the beloved mantra I repeat when running marathons (or pretty much anytime I need a boost). I’d love if you gave it a read! ❤️

How a Bestselling Ghostwriter Defines Success and Happiness

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Card of the Week

Here is this week’s card for the collective, as well as some thoughts to carry into the days ahead. As most modern readers will tell you, the tarot is not about fortunetelling, nor is it about neat, definitive answers. The cards are simply one path to reflection, a way of better knowing ourselves and others through universal themes. If this reading resonates with you, great! And if not, no worries. Take whatever may be helpful and leave the rest.

Abstract Futures Tarot by Hilma’s Ghost

An introductory physics or chemistry lesson will likely include the Law of Conservation of Mass: Matter can neither be created nor destroyed.

Pentacles are the suit of matter. This is often interpreted as meaning wealth, property…stuff. But the Queen of Pentacles is more concerned with the abstract side of materialism, particularly as it relates to worth.

The queen knows that matter doesn’t stop at material goods. It includes every substance imaginable. Earth. Nature. Flora and fauna. That which we behold and that which is too small to see. To quote Mufasa, it is everything the light touches. And the darkness, too.

The iconic Smith-Waite tarot with art by Pamela Colman Smith

The Queen of Pentacles adores matter. She loves beholding it, collecting it, luxuriating in it. She loves transmuting it.

Though she is often labeled as a materialist — the type who loves to be swathed in a cashmere throw, with big cozy slippers and an eye mask, or else swimming through a room full of coins like Scrooge McDuck — that isn’t a fair assessment. Yes, she is traditionally pictured cradling a giant coin with a reverence not seen since Gollum beheld “my precious.” But her roots are firmly planted in appreciation.

The energy of this card radiates a profound love for the world around us. If the queen is no stranger to abundance, it is only because she sees it everywhere — in good friends and kind strangers; in blue skies and cool breezes; in independence and spontaneity; in sharing and commiseration.

In other words, she appreciates. And what we appreciate, we amplify.

The Queen of Pentacles has a talent for recognizing worth — both her own, and the value inherent in others. Trust comes easily to her, if not in strangers then certainly in herself. She is a glass half full kind of person, spinning a narrative of possibility where others see only pitfalls.

Where others hoard possessions, the queen collects moments, knowing they are the most precious form of currency. She embraces the flow of life, even when it doesn’t line up with her ideal vision — as it often doesn’t — for she knows that (most) things take time. There is a season to everything, and a process, too. It is the way of all matter.

Too often, we act like progress must mean reinventing the wheel. As though the creation of matter were all up to us. But what if creation as we know it isn’t about starting from scratch, but adapting what is already at our disposal? About listening, and trying, and trusting? About heeding our intuition and acting accordingly? What if the answers are already out there, and our role is simply to seek?

In the days ahead, the Queen of Pentacles asks us to remember:

Matter can neither be created nor destroyed.

But it can change form. And so can we.

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