I’ve got a couple of trips planned before the end of the year, and I’m feeling that usual slight giddiness that comes with the prospect of going somewhere far enough away that there will actually be packing.
(I wanted to include a picture from Diana Nock and Ryan Estrada’s excellent Poorcraft: Wish You Were Here, but I couldn’t find anything about permission to do that, so I decided not to. Penny and Nickel packing are adorable, though.)
Weirdly, I think it is far enough away and not for long enough. I realize that needing to e.g. stay at over at someone’s house or in a local hotel if my street was evacuated or some family event was happening might also necessitate packing, but that does not spark the same gleeful anticipation.
That said, it might also be a factor of free time as well as a factor of distance. A trip generally connotes arranging things so that you have no or fewer pre-existing commitments during the time period; for an emergency evacuation, you haven’t had a chance to free up your schedule, and for a scheduled family event you’ve probably substituted new commitments for existing ones.
That said, I do look forward to scheduled family events in other cities. Perhaps it’s because I’m not likely to go to another city just for the family event, and so scheduled events in another city tend to bring free time along with them?
(Ramble over.)
I like packing. (I suspect this is in some way related to the fact that I like sending and receiving physical mail.) I find that if I haven’t travelled in a while, I tend to overpack, but I’m still expecting to be able to comfortably restrict myself to carry-on for a week’s trip.
I am also going to a convention. It is a small convention, for a weekend. It will be trivial to restrict myself to a carry-on bag for the trip out. It might be a little harder to make sure I do not come home with an uncomfortable amount more than I set out with. However, I am sure I will manage.