We decided to make Lisbon our permanent home base. A new lease, a bigger apartment, a new location, and everything Marianne and I owned to move across the city.
Three men did most of it.
The old place sat on the third floor. No lift. The new one, also third floor, also no lift. Charming. Every box, every chair, every piece filled over the years went down three flights and up three more. In June. In Lisbon.
I carried mostly nothing. The monitor, some bags, some packages. A plant. The things that break if you look at them wrong. The weight was theirs.
One of them took the chair down the stairwell on his back, alone, in a space built for people and not for furniture. He set it in the truck, wiped his face, and climbed back up for the next thing. Then he did it again. For an hour and a half. He was paid for the day. Not much, measured against what the day took from him.
I don't want to make them into a lesson. I don't know anything about their lives beyond that afternoon. But something became visible that usually isn't.
They finished, took their pay, and were already thinking about the next place across town. I closed the door on a room full of boxes.
That evening I sat back down at my screen. Sore in the way you're sore when you've done almost nothing. I move ideas around. They moved a home.
I get to choose what I work on. I get to find it interesting. Most people don't choose. They carry what they're handed, up whatever stairs are in front of them, and get up to do it again.
I don't call what I do a job. Not because it isn't work. Because I picked it. Everything I like about my days rests on that one piece of luck, and most of the time I forget it's there.
The boxes were waiting in the morning. I made coffee and started with the kitchen.