Me in a... Messenger Bag?

As I have been working and commuting on the bus recently, I have had an increased reliance of the majority of my life fitting into my messenger bag. As I sat at work the other day, looking into my bag, I began to realize: the possessions of one's bag really capture the essence of who they are. Honestly, much more than my wallet, my bag gives you a great in-depth look into who I am and what I do. I realize that it's a cliche idea, and it only makes sense that the one place where you put almost everything you might need on a daily basis had better well speak volumes about you, but I figured it could make for pretty good blog to give a brief rundown of what all goes into making a fully-grown Bill.

Glasses. I wear glasses to read, and 99% of my work requires that I wear them, plus I wear them when I read on the bus, which is all the time. I'm one of those sick weirdos who actually wishes he could wear glasses all the time. I realize that if I actually did have to wear them all the time, I would hate it, but I personally really like the way my glasses make me look, and wish more people saw me in them on a regular basis. These days, I keep a red felt-tip pen for editing markup in the case as well, and I always find that it looks just a little bit menacing in there lurking just below the glasses.

Whatever book I happen to be reading at the time. Reading on the bus is the one bright and shining silver lining that balances out the usually awful experience of having to ride MUNI. The trains are seldom on time, more and more people seem to think it's okay to bring a pet or do something gross on the bus, and I am seemingly constantly lambasted by homeless. But taking the bus to work means that I have two hours out of every week day in which the only enjoyable thing I could think to do is stand around and read, and I kind of love it.

Two Moleskine Notebooks. One is for general notes, one is for band notes. I don't use them nearly as much as I probably should, but they do come in wildly handy when I either think I should write something down (sometimes about this very blog) or need it for work, and by having the notebooks, I can keep them all organized and held together in a single book.

An iPod classic. I have an iPhone that I don't hardly ever listen to music on, I need the full 80 gigs of space to stash music on, and sometimes even that isn't enough. I actually kind of miss the days when iPods were considered devices that people used only to listen to music. This whole multi-functionality thing is for the birds. I want something small and light with enough music to let it outlast the battery life of the device.

Headphones. For me, headphones are one of the few places where I don't mind spending money. I hate earbuds, and because I like listening to music loudly in quiet offices, I want headphones that isolate sound well. I have burned through about four pairs of headphones in the last four or five years, but it's one of those things where I can't help but drop decent coin on a high quality pair.

Accordion File. This is a remnant from my teaching days; I found it in the band room where I was, and it is now adorned with a mirror-reflective B that came my way via a chemistry lab. It's perfect for two things: first, it keeps a little bit more structure at the back of the bag, which keeps everything inside a little more orderly. Second, it holds a lot of loose crap. I can put in spiral notebooks, manila folders, loose paper, all that. It's even got a special loop where I keep one of my many pens. I also keep Hello Monster CDs in there. I have a whole folder full of musical staff paper which I don't use nearly often enough, and stack of printouts explaining how you can build your own silk screen press from scratch, which I've never done.

Small pocket notepad. I bought some of these a few years ago, and honestly had halfway forgotten that I still had this one in here. Needless to say, it doesn't see a lot of use.

Writing utensils. I'm a huge pen dork, so I have a wide variety of pens, and somehow I assign a certain amount of significance to when each gets used. By my current count, there are 3 black pens, 3 pencils (two traditional, one mechanical), one red pen, one multi-color pen/pencil, a fine-tip sharpie, and the aforementioned red felt pen for editing. Sad thing is, I used to keep my old glasses in one of the pencil flaps of the bag until those broke, so now I'm thinking about what pens need to get added in.

Gum. One of my oldest friends was somewhat surprised to find that I almost always have gum with me. I keep it in my bag, I keep a huge container in my car, a huge container on my desk at home, and pretty much anywhere that isn't in my pockets. I am an obsessive gum chewer, even though I'm the type who will chew a piece of gum until it is hard as a rock and lost its flavor some hours earlier.

The other day, I even had a volume pedal in there, but that was strictly there because I was selling it on Craigslist and was supposed to meet the buyer that afternoon. Still, it seemed a fitting addition that I could include for the sake of this blog.

Perhaps most importantly, the main thing about my bag is that it is organized to a T. Just like the way I try to live my life, there is always a place for everything, and everything is usually in its place. I know where each pen should be, which side the books should be on, and what needs to be moved where in order to accommodate other items.

In other words, I'm a huge dork who spends too much time looking into his bag.