1-800-GOT-JUNK?

May 26, 2026 ·

Now is a time good as any to put this in writing: I'm moving. To Utah. For a project. We'll see how it goes and how I like it as I spend the summer there. I don't have a permanent next place yet. I've been donating and getting rid of basically everything I have so I'm down major on my household inventory. Probably the last two big things left are my couch and my mattress which will get picked up tomorrow morning. 1-800-GOT-JUNK has been easier to deal with in comparison to the last few movers I worked with. I call them this morning and they were ready to show up then and there; I'm not even used to that much efficiency. I booked them for tomorrow so I can sleep in my own bed one more night. I've been telling people that this whole moving ordeal is heavier as an emotional project than it is getting rid of physical things which is the easy part.

Austin was nice to live in. Houston, too. I'm a very big fan of Texas and consider it home. I moved to Texas in 2005, so it's been a good 21 years here. It's been booming ever since I moved here so it's been a good ride. I might be back, who knows. I've visited Utah before but just for vacation. It was very beautiful. But visiting on vacation and living somewhere is totally different, so we'll see how this adventure goes. I'm a big fan of road trips so I decided to drive there and not take a plane. Another thing I've been telling people is that I have mostly ran out of bucket list things to do in my life, so now it's obscure things that don't get much attention otherwise; like moving states within America. People in America move states all the time and packing your stuff up, loading it all up in a U-Haul truck to drive cross country is a very American thing. Stop by a classic diner on route 66, that whole thing. I've done a pseudo version of that just vacationing but this time I'm doing the real thing. I'm loading up everything I have, well getting rid of a lot first and then loading up everything in my truck, then driving cross country. It will be a good time, or so I hope. We'll see how it works out.

When I moved from Houston to Austin in 2021, that was within Texas so I never felt it was that drastic. I even go to the same grocery stores here as Houston. I will miss HEB and wonder what kind of grocery stores Utah has. But along the same time I moved to Austin, there was a large chunk of people moving here from California. I've visited California many times now and it's very nice, but somehow over time I much prefer Texas; so it made sense to me that people moved to Texas from California. People have a certain view of Texas elsewhere I've noticed with time. When I've traveled to Canada or India or Europe, people tend to think of Texas as this racist place where Trump supporters live or something like that. Funny how memes spread and make us think of places and people. I have no such pre-existing notions of Utah.

That's really what's happening today, packing, moving, thinking about my time in Texas and bidding it goodbye. It's also the reason why I am naming the book Texas Sunsets.