FISCHER: Unpacking the puzzle

By Travis Fischer, tkfischer@charelscitypress.com

When I was a young lad, I was given a set of World Book Childcraft Encyclopedia. Long before “screen time” was a thing, they were great books full of stories, math problems, science lessons, and all other sorts of things to stimulate a young mind.

One of my favorite entries in the set was a logic puzzle. A very old logic puzzle called the Wolf, Goat, and Cabbage Problem. A boy with a wolf, a goat, and a cabbage must cross a river by boat. The boat will only carry the boy and one of the others at a time. If the boy takes the wolf, the goat will eat the cabbage. If the boy takes the cabbage, the wolf will eat the goat.

To get everything to the other side of the river, you’ve got to move the goat back and forth across the river a few times. It seems counter-intuitive, but it can be done.

I’m thinking about that puzzle a lot these days as I try to figure out how to unpack all of my things.

I need to put my clothes away, but there’s a box of collectables on top of them. I need to put the collectables away, but I don’t have the shelves up for them yet. I can’t get the shelves in place until my PC is set up. The PC can’t get set up until I find all of the components, some of which I’m pretty sure are buried under my clothes.

And so it goes. One task leads to another task leads to another and another until I’ve forgotten what I wanted to do in the first place. Sure, things are getting done, bit-by-bit, but not in the order I planned.

Moving is an adventure.

Or, more accurately, moving is like an adventure game.

Traditionally, in an adventure game, you start off in a narrow sliver of the game world and have to expand on it by acquiring different power-ups that let you access more of the map.

Years of playing Zelda, Metroid, and Resident Evil are paying off as I unlock more and more of my apartment with every unpacked box. It’s not just a matter of putting everything in its place. Clearing out one box opens up new possibilities, either because I’ve cleared out space for something else or because I finally found those darn kitchen scissors.

You wouldn’t believe the possibilities that opened up for me once I got my pantry assembled. No longer will my groceries be stored in plastic bags in the closet, and now that they’re put away I can get to other things that also need a home.

Believe it or not, I had a plan for all this. I’ve spent weeks mentally preparing for this move, plotting out where everything would be. I’d say only about half of that plan is working out the way I anticipated.

It’s a maddening process. It’s a puzzle that changes as you try to solve it. Suddenly something doesn’t fit like you think it would and you find yourself moving bookshelves that you’ve already filled up.

It’ll all sort out eventually, but man I’d like to be able to get from my bed to my desk without charting a path around unpacked boxes.

Travis Fischer is a news writer for the Charles City Press and hopes he can figure out where all the Christmas presents went before next week.