When I was leaving for LA I had this grand existential crisis surrounding whether I would go there and stay. When I talked about it then, it was the sort of half-truth I sometimes tell when I’m afraid of who’s listening.

I voiced, out loud, that I wasn’t sure if I was ready to settle down anywhere and that I was afraid that the lure of being back in the place that has always felt the most like home would be enough to make me stick somewhere. What I said, openly, was, “maybe this could be a good thing!”

What I wasn’t saying: I was convinced it would a terrible thing. I was terrified of the idea of going to a place and staying. I was terrified that I was going to settle. The fact that this was a place I once lived felt, on some level, like returning there somehow the same as everyone who never left our small town in Missouri.

I was trying to convince myself of something. And then it turned out to be irrelevant, because it didn’t stick. Not because of anything inherent to the place, but because of a combination of factors, not the least of which being that I wasn’t ready to go somewhere and stay. Even as I struggled with all the things that made me leave LA, I was also incredibly relieved.

In that sense, things never got settled. I moved to LA and lived on a couch for most of that time, and then in my car, and then I left.

I returned to Missouri for a year and half, which was a lot longer than I expected. In spite of being seemingly settled — I wasn’t moving around, all my stuff was generally in one place, etc. — being there was an inherently unsettled arrangement because I knew I would never stay. I had all this baggage tied to that place, a fact which always made it unlikely that I would ever want to stay.

I remained in my parents house mostly because I didn’t want to go again until I knew I could stay gone. I didn’t want to start something else I didn’t know I could see through. Over the course of that year and a half, my feelings on planting roots shifted.

The comings and goings turned into their own kind of routine. I have put my life into boxes annually for the last 8 years. Since graduating from high school, not a year has gone by where I didn’t pack up my life at least once. Often two or three times in a year.

It depends how we’re counting, but I figure there were about 15 moves in that time. In 8 years I have lived in at least 2 houses, 3 dorm rooms, 6 apartments, and a car. Not counted: a handful of extended stay hotels and other transition spaces – the place in Morocco? The friends who let me invade their tiny homes so I’d have a place to sleep? Those homes spanned 3 continents and now that I’m in Montana, I have officially crossed off all four time zones of the lower 48 — just in the last 8 years.

Packing up my life yet again, it hit me that for the first time I am anticipating that the boxes will stay unpacked, at least for a little while. At least for a lot longer than they’re used to. 2015 might be the first year in a long time that they stay unpacked. That’s what I’m expecting to happen and I’m really excited about the idea.

I packed differently. In the past, I’ve always left the project incomplete. At a certain point I would just lose steam. I have boxes that I didn’t get to in some move or another because I got bored or frustrated. And the more times you do this half-assed thing, the harder it becomes the next time around. These boxes turn out to be little time capsules. Here is a box of books from that apartment in DC. Here are some clothes I wore all the time in LA.

I took the time to go through everything. Sort it all. Lots of things were donated or thrown away. I let go of most of the little scraps I used as handholds for former versions of myself. Things I could reach for if I switched course. The safety net. The part that builds “maybe this won’t work out” into the plan from the beginning.

(As an aside, my minimalist friends will be so proud of me: I had a firm “if I won’t sort it, then I have to get rid of it” policy on these endless boxes.)

The last time I left I was afraid of staying put. Now I find myself actively hoping that this one will take — and I suspect that this thought, in and of itself, is what will make the difference.

This feeling is new. I didn’t feel this way about landing even as recently as spring. When I was still finishing my thesis and everything seemed uncertain, I didn’t feel ready. I felt like there were too many things I couldn’t pin down and if I couldn’t pin it all down, then the best thing to do was to throw myself into the wind and enjoy the ride.

And then this summer happened. Two more weddings of beloved people. I spent time with my family in Italy. With old friends in Paris. And through it all, I started to realize that I was a little jealous of these people who seemed so steady on their feet. People who didn’t need to hop from one foot to the other, shifting their weight to keep from collapsing.

My plan had been to keep building this little business that I started mostly by accident, and eventually move down to Costa Rica. When I first chose Costa Rica, back in the spring, I envisioned it as a stopover. I’d go there and hang out for a bit and then keep moving south. Keep moving until I found something to sit still for, I suppose. Keep moving until I stopped needing a bucket list to give me a sense of purpose.

This isn’t to say that I’m over traveling. I still want to see everything. But somewhere along the line, the idea of constant! motion! started to sound less exciting and more exhausting, not the least because the blur makes it hard to actually see anything. (Another thing I discovered this summer, as I realized I would never want to retrace the go-go-go backpacking adventure I had with my brother in the summer of 2008.)

For the first time I would like to have some sort of foundation from which to start. I’d like to be able to actually see everything. Emphasis has shifted.

I have also grown tired of hesitating on decisions because I’m not quite sure where I’ll be living in four months. This consideration — “Where will I be then?” — affected a thousand choices, big and small. I used to think that kept me nimble enough to be open to everything. And for a time, that was true. At some point, though, that state of indecision likely began to cost me more opportunities than it gave me. I watch as my far-flung friends build lives and futures with people in their immediate presence. I feel this looming anxiety of drifting away with nothing comparable to gravitate toward; it’s hard to establish those kinds of relationships when you keep your bags half-packed at all times.

The way I think about it has everything to do with what happens next. Nothing stuck before because was deliberately not building things to last. I lived in Paris without really learning French. I lived in LA in the most early-twenties-just-out-of-college fashion imaginable. (But if you’ve ever seen the backseat of a 2006 Mustang, you know that I am not fucking around when I say that I can sleep anywhere.) I was writing those endings from the beginning.

While packing I found relics of these former selves. As I put them wherever they belong — donate, trash, pack, storage — I also started seeing the ways in which they represent someone else. Someone who helped make me as I now am, but someone who is decidedly not me as I now am. I am finding an ease with myself that these former iterations never possessed. Into one box goes a photo, into another goes a mirror.

I am looking forward to being done with these boxes, letting the story unfold as it will. I’m excited to live in a story with an unknown ending.