My room is finally coming together.
Figurines finding their cozy corners, clothes folded into new drawers, and gym equipment stacked neatly on the tiered shelf. Even sticky notes were involved, scattered across the room like footsteps guiding me through a boxy forest.

As the boxes slowly disappeared, so did the tension around my shoulders.
They had been tucked away for so long that I’d forgotten what was inside.
Every box felt like Christmas in July – except nothing was new. Just long-lost.
The last one I opened was filled with untitled notebooks.
I paused.

It was the first time I’d stepped back to realise just how many I’d gone through.
My fingers ran across every cover, as if tracing the outlines of my past.
”13… 14… 15… For 10 years?” I thought.
”I don’t remember going through this many.”

Each one felt like a unique grimoire. Some were filled with steps for design rituals and artistic incantations, others carried borrowed wisdom and remnants of failed experiments. As I flipped through them, patterns began to emerge in the way my thoughts looped between art, design, philosophy and strategy.

As I uncovered more about myself, I decided to label each notebook for future reference.
I was very good at not writing the dates, so it became a quiet hunt to sort them by year.
Keywords would hint at sketches.
Sketches pointed to old pictures.
Old pictures led me to untitled file names.
Paragraphs whispered buried thoughts.
Drawings resurfaced quiet memories.

And somewhere in the revival of it all, I remembered something else:
I was never really a journal kind of guy.
Words used to feel awkward and I was terrified of unravelling who I really was.
But now, I enjoy it.
The documentation has become part of the journey.
In fact, it feels like a privilege…

To know that while I have not yet become, I am still becoming.

And as I keep striving towards my ideal self, I’ll be reminded by these spellbooks I write, to help me find my way back to me.

This is ironic to realise in hindsight.
But it seems I wasn’t unpacking the boxes.
The boxes were unpacking me.