Peace of Mind Organizing

Packing for the plane

1 May 2008

I’m flying home from Hawaii late this afternoon. It’s an overnight flight and I arrive in St. Louis at 8 in the morning. That’s an eleven hour journey, not counting the time I spend waiting for my flight at the Honolulu airport.

When I flew here last week, I packed my carry-on as though I were traveling with a toddler I feared would get bored and start screaming (in this analogy, I’m the toddler). I hauled more stuff on board than I even looked at. I spent most of my time watching a DVD on my computer and the plane’s fairly wretched movie (National Treasure).

So as I contemplate packing for my ride home, I realize I need to lighten the load. Part of me wants to take advantage of all that free airplane time and concentrate on my business and do some all-important planning. I’ve been so focused on my client this past week that I can’t even remember what’s going on with my real life. I know I still have follow-up to do from the NAPO national conference.

I want to re-read Do It Tomorrow since I’ve fallen a little off the wagon with that system. And I need to re-visit my to-do list.

But the other part of me wants to take a novel and call it a day (and night). I’ll have my computer, so I can watch the last episode on Season 4, Disk 1 of The Wire, an amazing HBO series. Between that, my knitting (I’m making a burgundy cabled wrap), and my iPod with all its podcasts, I really don’t need anything else.

So I think the conclusion I’m coming to is that less is more. I don’t want schlep a heavy bag around the Honolulu and Chicago airports (my 13” MacBook is heavy enough on its own). I’m going to take to my computer, my knitting, my iPod, and the novel I have from the library (Linda Fairstein’s Bad Blood). And I’ll throw in a notepad to write down some to-dos.

That still seems like quite a lot of stuff, doesn’t it? I’m actually hoping that I sleep so much I don’t need most of it!

Tagged with: knitting, mark forster, packing, travel

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