Six years ago, when my life changed, it started with a chair.

I've written here many times about the struggle that life in my late twenties was; how crushed I felt by the weight of just how much I had turned out to not be what I'd hoped to become. I was stuck in a job that I hated, in a life that felt millions of miles away from the life I'd dreamed of as a little girl, and there was a time - a long time, actually - when I couldn't see how any moment in the future could possibly bring with it something better. Or even something different.

And then, at a party late one night, I met a girl who did something called "blogging." I'd heard of blogging, sort of - I mean, I had a rough idea of what a blog was, had even started a hidden Blogger account documenting my worst dates (oh my god), and read Perez Hilton like it was my part-time job - but I certainly didn't know it was something that one could even consider doing for a living. And yet this girl seemed to, somehow...and at that moment I was so desperate for something to change that when she asked me to do an "audition" of sorts to become a contributor for her site, I said yes without a moment's hesitation.

We're about halfway packed - my strategy is to do at least a couple of boxes every day - and about five weeks from the date of our departure (officially May 21st), and the house is starting to fill up with emptiness.

It's hard, watching these rooms that I put together so carefully - and loved so much - get broken down. Dust from the endless boxes getting dragged up from the basement is settling into the cracks along the sideboards; all the photos are wrapped up in plastic; we're eating meals off of the same four dishes every day, because they're the only ones left that I haven't packed. With each passing day, our house feels less like "our house," and more like a place we're staying in for the time being, before moving on to the next thing.

And not knowing what that "next thing" is - because we still don't* - makes it harder to let go of what we do know.