I had no idea how much space my stuff would take up in a moving van, and apparently the moving company didn’t either. On Saturday, the mover, a nearly seven-foot-tall West Indian guy, told me that I could pay for the extra space, but then gave me a number that sent a chill down my spine.
“Florida to New York is a long trip,” he explained. “And very expensive.”
Another $1,200 later, and the mover shook his head and motioned toward my two Ikea bookshelves and the coffee table I bought when Tuesday Morning was going out of business. “If I were you, I’d just throw these away and get new ones. They’re cheap.”
They were, but they probably won’t be for long.
On Wednesday, President Trump stood in the Rose Garden and announced new tariffs on the rest of the planet, a baseline of 10 percent, then higher tariffs on dozens of other countries, including significant trading partners like China, Vietnam, and the EU—as well as uninhabited, penguin-occupied islands.
The rising cost of replacing my cheap shit was the last straw, the one that shot my nerves. We loaded up what we could in the car and just started driving. The van would meet us three days later in New York.
I insisted we stop for the night in a run-down Motel 6 in Georgia. There was a hooker smoking cigarettes in the parking lot and what looked like bloodstains on the walls. We were here because five years ago, I tweeted a hot take and someone offered me money to write about it, and I needed the $300 they offered me to make my car payment, which I couldn’t do on $14 an hour, which is what I was making at the time. Things escalated from there. I kept writing, and writing, and then about two years ago I got my first full-time gig. It was the first time in my life I’d felt middle-class. Now I was on my way to New York and a big raise that seemed smaller with every mile I drove. I don’t care about money; I’m just terrified of not having it again.