Picking up the pieces, placing them into neat but heavy boxes, and then hauling them away. I know I've spent many, many of my precious hours doing just this. Sometimes it's satisfying, sometimes it's just necessity, but it always gives the illusion of progress. It's certainly work - force exerted over distance. But Progress?

Usually it's a move from one place to another, but sometimes it's just turning two piles into one, with a new stack of boxes to haul away. But there should be lightness and space left behind when the stuff gets thinned out- it seldom feels that way. It will tomorrow, though.

Tomorrow's the last day of moving my wife's things out of the house before we make it official and move on to our new lives. I work myself to exhaustion moving and sorting, hauling and lifting- it's my penance, I suppose, but it's oddly satisfying. If I felt that I was carrying our relationship on my back for all these years, this is my last chance to bear and then release that burden. And I will.