I'm moving this week. I've discovered 43 biros and nearly a tenner in coins.
Despite my best efforts to eliminate all dross, to cut from the past, to live in the now, to travel light, to unencumber myself from baggage, literal and real, I have failed dismally. I wanted to cull my book collection; out of ten cardboard boxes full, only one is now marked "get rid". (Where do you get rid of books?)

There is a sense of satisfaction attached to a book that leaves me indebted. I can't clear my debts, as much as I'd like to. Examining each book, the force of personality behind the covers made it impossible for me to let go of it. The memory of who gave it to me. The sense of the author, his or her voice, intonation, rhythm, grasp of life. The guilt if I hadn't read it, after all those years. The question that was most successful in dumping a book was "Am I ever going to read that, no matter how much I should?" Many worthy tomes were abandoned with a resigned, but liberating "Never!" Life is too short to have bookshelves that reproach you. The more loved the books, the more decrepit their condition. The new shelves, when I get around to putting them up in the new place, will be a Velveteen-Rabbit-like stack of drab coffee-coloured wedges of tattered paper, aesthetically offensive, but priceless.
So many people are moving like me. I'm only going down the road, which is traumatic enough. But too many others are leaving the country, and I know only too well the powerful sense of alienation that brings. I emigrated back in 1993, leaving a fading career – acting – and my benighted country behind.
The anxiety of rootlessness, not knowing where and when one is going to settle again. The ache of leaving your family, the panic of abandoning your friends – not the close ones, with whom you will always remain close, but the wider network of people who make life bearable, the good folk who are around in your local when you feel like company, the newsagents who are there to share a smile in the mornings. The fabric of your life.
The stress of not knowing if you can recreate that network in your new country. The stress of finding a flat that doesn't seem third-world, with all of your belongings fitting into a couple of suitcases and a box or two sent by post. The confusion of setting up new bank accounts and social insurance numbers and finding a GP and signing leases, and signing on. The search for work. The way employers view an Irish P45 with disdain. The registration forms, the background checks, the queues. Plugging into a new society with no recognizable credit rating, having to compensate by proving you have a right to something, that you're not a bad risk, that you are entitled to support, to service, to goods, to a job, that you are who you say you are. We are so used in Ireland to having social connections, in order to make things happen, like getting a job, that it is a shock to be in a country where Irish sociability, seemingly, counts for nothing; indeed, we make ourselves seem even more alien.
The jobs that are available to unqualified foreigners, that aren't yet in the system, are gruesome. I spent one harrowing morning in a cold-selling call centre in Hackney, East London, trying to convince addled pensioners at the end of the phone that a box of concentrated bottles of detergent was a "revolutionary new system" that would take care of all their domestic cleaning needs for two years. I forget the exact exorbitant amount of money we were trying to extract from the poor souls, who found themselves on the list of victims by virtue of filling in competition forms on the back of detergent packets. But it was pure exploitation. The selling floor was a bear pit, dozens of people with scripts in their hands standing by bare plywood phone banks, with full instructions on how to gloss over the small print, how to distract the gullible with the prize draw for a swanky car that was theirs for the winning. ("What colour would you like yours to be?") A bell rung whenever a vulture made another sale. Despite only having the bus-fare home in my pocket, myself and a Kiwi guy took one look at each other at lunch, went to the pub across the road, and spent it on a pint and a promise never to return. And I walked home until my feet hurt.
I was the last one of my gang of friends to emigrate, the slowest to accept the inevitable. But the Irish exodus of the eighties was not only economic, it was social. Especially for gay people, who were still criminals then. The only way I and my friends could imagine a fulfilling life was to leave. It was a case of patience running out – yes, Mary Robinson had been elected, and yes, the laws would go, but there was no real hope that Ireland would change enough to make it a civilized and comfortable place in which to live. Not in our lifetimes.
We couldn't have foreseen the Celtic Tiger, but our sense that Ireland wasn't really going to change much has been vindicated by the way those who didn't emigrate misspent the Tiger billions. No intelligence, no foresight, no planning. A nation of cute hoors and huxters, we're back to where we were, with a murderous hangover.
Leaving a country in recession is a miserable thing to have to do. And yet, it's not the worst thing to happen to a person. It can be enriching, exciting, and extremely educational. And many of my original gang have good lives abroad.
There is understandably a lot of rage around that emigration is back again in Irish life. Most especially, when we torment ourselves with the idea that it was avoidable. I do not wish to be an apologist in any way for the economic disaster this country is facing, but I also don't want to wring my hands for ever over it, lamenting it.
Those who go through the heartbreaking wrench of leaving this island and making a living abroad learn a hell of a lot, not only about how things are done in other countries, but also about what is wrong with the way we do things here. It is, in the long run, something that can work to our advantage as a nation.
As long as they come back. Many of my generation came back, to see the wonders of our new-found wealth, only to see it dissolve like sandcastles in the tide. I doubt if any of us have the stomach to leave again, no matter how hard things are for us, which they are for everyone I know. And the way things are now, I'm not convinced that we have earned the right to expect that this new wave of diaspora should return.
We can but hope.