My 30th birthday at the archaeological site of Çatalhöyük in Turkey in 2019. Will my bag still be around 8000 years from now?

The contents of my versatile and multi-purpose travel bag.

Even choosing a bag for this activity was a true archeological dig. There are only two bags that I keep consistently packed at all times, my dog’s travel bag and my carry on travel bag. Although analyzing the contents of my dog’s bag may have proven to be in interesting exercise I felt that my own, sadly still unpacked travel bag, might say more about me. The bag is not packed at all times on purpose, but rather remains full because I seldom get around to cleaning it out between trips. It acts as a convenient and constant receptacle for the items that shift through the pockets and transient handbags of my days and weeks. I stopped using a purse last year when I finally decide that I was tired of forgetting it everywhere and opted to find coats with big enough pockets to carry the essentials. These essentials, and items that would have at one time been rolling around in the bottom of a massive handbag, seldom used and often forgotten, are mostly stored in my travel bag. It sits under desks, on chairs and at the bottom of my closet, being shifted around my apartment until it is needed for my next trip or until I need to swap out one essential item for another. One day I might need my watercolour set, another my headphones. I tend to leave these items lying around the house after they have been used, until I can’t reliably locate them and I gather them all to return them to my travel bag in one frustrated sweep of the apartment. Right now I am using a blue Fjallraven backpack for this catch-all bag with a UBC education logo emblazoned on the front that I received as a gift for hosting a teacher candidate last year.  

I don’t have a daily need for all of these items and some are more aspirational than strictly practical, so I will focus on the following ten items:

1. Sunglasses: I got laser eye surgery to correct my vision about 9 years ago and my eyes have been more sensitive to the sun ever since. The sunglasses are as essential to me during the summer as they are forgettable. The cord attached to them keeps me from losing them and the headache medication is what I use when I do forget my sunglasses. 
2. Sunscreen: I love outdoor activities, especially ones that take place on the water when the sun is shinning. I also like to travel during the summer to sun soaked destinations when COVID restrictions allow. Genetically speaking however, I am more suited to life in a dark cave during the summer months, so I slather on as much SPF 110 as I can, cover up, and hope for the best. 
3. Watercolour Travel/ Art Kits: During March 2020 I was home bored and looking for another hobby to add to my extensive list of existing interests. I had always wanted to be proficient at sketching and painting so I bought a tiny watercolour travel kit and gave it a try. I started with online IGTV tutorials and eventually started painting landscapes from my travels. I’m not amazing yet, but it is something I enjoy and that I can see myself improving in slowly but surely.
4. My Phone: I am about as attached to my phone, represented here by my glittery case, as most people of my generation. I primarily use it for browsing instagram, reading emails and playing word puzzle games, keeping in touch with friends and family and navigating through life using Apple Maps.
5. “The Once and Future Witches” by Alix E. Harrow: I have always been an avid reader of fantasy and briefly tried out TikTok last year, where this book was recommended. 
6. External Battery Packs: I sometimes forget to charge my phone and always choose the cheapest flights when I travel, resulting in ludicrously long layovers. Multiple battery packs keep my digital life running. 
7. My Red and Blue Wallets: My red wallet is for the daily essentials, while the blue one is for travel and when I want to use gift cards. The red one is practical and populated by credit cards, debit cards and IDs. The blue one however, is more interesting and would probably tell someone far more about me. You would find my favourite stores in the form of gift cards, my advanced open water scuba certificate and a boat license that everyone should hope I never use, since I have no practical skills that would allow me to actually pilot a boat.
8. My Passports: I have dual citizenship with Canada and the USA and travel with both passports.
9. My Pile of Receipts: I have never and will never categorize these, use them for budgeting or submit them for reimbursement. The receipts at the bottom of my bag do nothing but provide unnecessary cushioning for my other items and remind me of silly purchases like the assortment of airport snacks listed in the crumpled one pictured.
10. Coin Pile: This pile used to be more interesting pre-March 2020. Now, it is mainly an even mixture of US and Canadian coins. The assorted coin pile is usually a pretty accurate way of counting the countries that I have been to that year. 

Although only some of these items could be considered to be traditional texts, I can be read through all of them. Someone could tell my skills level at art and when I likely started through looking at the half empty pans in my pallet, my watercolour landscapes, the fact that I use too much black when I should be mixing contrasting colours to create a more natural looking dark hue. Through items with a small amount of digitally printed text like the gift cards, bottles, coins and passport stamps they could tell far more. They could tell the place of my birth (USA) the country that I immigrated to and became a citizen of (Canada). They could tell my ethnicity through the SPF on my sunscreen and my favourite stores through the logos and text on the gift cards. They would see that I am a scribbler, a doodler by the pens and scraps of handwritten text on the back of the receipts. 

If they looked into my phone or my book they could find out even more about me. They would see that I have audiobooks in French and guess that I am bilingual. They could assume from the subject matter of the book that I chose that I like fantasy, history, feminism and a good dose of magic. They would see that I have audiobooks on my phone and that I like to listen to language, but that I don’t have any ebooks, preferring to feel the paper in my hands. They would be able to see my love of animals through the overwhelming number of photos of them on my camera roll.

This bag 15 years ago would have been less organized but would likely have included many of the same elements. I know myself fairly well, my strengths and shortcomings and feel comfortable that the things I choose to carry with me reflect who I see myself as. I try to be honest with the world. Most people who know me, even in passing, know that they will likely have to chase me down to return my phone to me and that I have more hobbies than I can possibly discuss without boring people, not that this always stops me. I am surprised by how much this bag says about me, although I suppose I shouldn’t be considering that I curated it for travel, allowing it to become a microcosm of my greater life as I hit the road for a new adventure.