It’s Monday again.  I get up early, still hurting from Saturday’s adventure on the hang gliding hills.  As I unkink my body getting out of bed, I feel grateful that it’s not a workout day.  I vow that I will take a walk, however, in the hope of loosening up my sore muscles.

Since I also discover that there is no food in the house, I talk Pat into taking a short walk through the park and then a detour to the grocery store.  As we walk through the aisles trying to decide what we need, we realize that we are leaving tomorrow.  We limit ourselves to just enough food for breakfast, hoping the last of the milk will go far enough for two bowls of cereal.

Today is full of meetings.   Meetings where I have to pay attention the whole time, if not actually run the call.  I work late trying to get the things done I couldn’t get done during the day.  As it gets later, I get more stressed, realizing that I have personal work to do to get ready to leave tomorrow, too.

For one, I need to get the photos I will use in my blog ready before I go on the road.  I ran into issues with my photos exceeding my hard drive space on my (in tech years) ancient macbook pro.  After repeatedly spending hours cleaning out extra photos trying to make more space, I finally got tired of it and bought a mac mini server with a total of 1TB of drive space.  I thought I would move everything except my pictures and still have my photos on my laptop.

That didn’t work out.  I still kept running my 120GB drive out of space.  Funny out big 120GB sounded when I bought my macbook pro.

When I downloaded Aperture, Apple’s photo editing software, it turned out to be the final domino.  Not only did Aperture motivate me to start shooting in RAW again, which increased the file size of my photos by a factor of 3, but it also had all kinds of performance problems with my laptop’s 2GB of memory.

Not wanting my mac mini to go to waste, I moved my photo library and Aperture to it and started using it for photo processing.  This, however is not the best set up for a nomad into digital photography and blogging.  It means my pictures are all on a box sitting at home.  Although the server is small enough that I have taken it with me on a couple of road trips, packing a monitor is not practical and trying to use Aperture using “share screens” from my macbook pro is just painfully slow.

I would love to hear if there are other digital-photographer-want-to-be nomads out there who struggle with their IT setup and how they cope.

Today, my tactic is to plan ahead so that the photos I want to use during my trip are already uploaded to my blog site.  It’s been dark a while and the clock is telling me I’m running out of time.  I wrap up the critical things I need to do for work as quickly as I can and then get to work on my pictures.

I cut corners on my photo processing–I make faster decisions about which pictures to use, I don’t give them meaningful titles, and I don’t do much in the way of adjusting. Then I go through the process of exporting them all to small JPEG files and uploading them to wordpress.  Viola!  All pictures for the next 6 days ready to roll.

But, having packed for my blog, I now have to pack for me.  As someone whose job used to be described as a “road warrior” job, I have taken pride in my ability to pack light and quickly.  Part of the joy of traveling for me has come from my ability to minimize the difficulty of packing and hauling crap from one place to another.  Unfortunately, this nomad thing seems to complicate my traveling requirements significantly.

First, there is the fact that we drive most places.  Having a mini-van (or even just a small car) invites me to consider everything I might possibly want to have with me vs looking at what I can fit into one small carry-on and a small backpack.  Second, I feel compelled to take my camera bag at least.  Since I have yet to shoot while on a trip back to Columbus, I talk myself into leaving my heaviest lens and tripod at home as a compromise.  Third, I plan to workout with the group in Columbus, which means I need a workout bag so I can take the stuff I need to get ready for work at the gym.  Fourth, my IT needs have to be met for both home and work, meaning two laptops, an iPad, iPhone, Verizon MiFi, and all the associated power supplies.

I look at my laptop bag, laptop backpack, camera bag, and workout bag piled on the floor and shake my head.  It looks like I’m moving.  Then, I realize I haven’t actually packed any clothes yet.

I am stumped.  What clothes do I need for this trip?  The office clothes are easy enough.  But I have to check the weather forecast to decide what else to bring.  Now I’m in a panic because it’s 11PM, I’m still packing and we’re planning to get an early start in the morning.

I start the behavior that always results in poor packing; I call it “throwing in.”  This is when you stop thinking about what you’re going to wear each day and start just throwing in whatever you see on the basis of “Oh, I might wear this.”  This is how I end up places with 5 shirts that don’t go with a single pair of pants I’ve packed or with 15 pairs of socks and no underwear.

I try to stop myself.  I pull out half of what I’ve thrown in, making sure what’s left will work together, and counting underwear.  Somehow I still end up with a bag so full I have to unzip the expansion zipper to accommodate the bulk.  I set my bag aside and start getting ready for bed.

As I get ready for bed, I keep thinking of things I’ve forgotten to pack–a headband, deodorant, lotion, a brush–basically a myriad of toiletries that I wish I didn’t think I needed, but that I really miss when I go without.  I gather up what I won’t need in the morning and stuff it into my suitcase.  Oh!  My travel makeup kit–I’d forgotten about putting on makeup.

Convinced that I have more than enough stuff to make it through the days in Columbus, I call it a night, setting the alarm for 5:00AM.  But I lay awake in bed for a while, wondering how I could simplify this process and un-clutter my life.  After all, isn’t that one of our biggest goals?  I ponder the “throwing in” response and why the thought of not having one little convenience creates panic.  It’s a little hard to simplify without giving up something.  My last thoughts as I drift off to sleep are about throwing out.