I’ve always prided myself on being a minimalist traveler. Going away for a month? Give me a pair of pants and two shirts — three, if formal wear is required — and I’m good. I’ll take only as many shoes as I can comfortably wear at one time, and whatever necessary toiletries that cannot easily be gleaned from a motel bathroom, 7-11 or local shelter. I want to travel light and, short of losing weight, this is the best way about it.

There are many excellent reasons to limit your encumbrances to one bag. Packing is faster. Getting through security is almost trivial, as is getting out of the airport. You have fewer things to accidentally leave behind and startle the housekeeping staff. It’s suddenly much easier to be caught up in an exciting cross-country web of intrigue since you won’t have to ask the mysterious blonde stranger to wait while you find your garment bag and collection of multi-colored totes. There’s a quiet satisfaction to be had, knowing you can stand up and go anywhere at a moment’s notice.

And it’s a satisfaction I relished, before the electronic age. Now I’m finding I may have one or two extra things to haul along.

I have to have my cell phone, obviously. Not only is it exponentially cheaper than the motel phone and more dependable than the decrepit work of tortured and possibly dripping street art that was once a public phone, but now if I get lost I can connect to the Web, access Google Maps, and quickly find out exactly which cross street I’m about to get mugged at while I’m walking around waving a cell phone.

And a cell phone means a cell phone charger, so toss that in the bag too.

I need my Palm Pilot because it’s useful and handy and because if I get more than 15 feet away from it I start twitching. I’m lost without my address book and calendar and my games and my photos and a couple dozen ebooks and a few hundred songs and copies of everything I’ve ever written and notes on everything else to write, because without them I… I….. I wouldn’t have them. You can see my dilemma.

Add another charger, because electronics companies have entire departments dedicated to designing new plugs that are guaranteed to be utterly incompatible with anything that has ever existed in solid form, ever.

I’ll also need my folding keyboard so I can sit in coffee shops and write down whatever strikes my brain while simultaneously impressing everyone around me that I am a Real Live Writer, something I have no doubt they’d admire if they’d ever look up from typing into their laptops. Writing and acting pretentious is what coffee shops are for. Right now I am in a Starbucks in Chapel Hill, NC, and this is my environment: three different people are writing in their journals (the third one seems to be scribbling furiously while glaring at the other two); the apron-clad people behind the counter are fighting to the death with frappuchino mixers over the comparative merits of Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holliday; a small group of college students seem to be earnestly solving the world’s problems one after the other, and one confused tourist came in and attempted — get this — to buy a cup of coffee before leaving, defeated. My folding keyboard is my shield against public mediocrity, so in the bag it goes.

The Palm only holds a few hundred songs so I have my MP3 player to pick up the slack, for those situations where I need 420 hours of uninterrupted music, which happens more often than you’d think. No charger for this one — ha! — but I bring headphone and extra batteries.

Because the Palm can connect to the Web, I don’t really need to bring my laptop. I agonize over the laptop. It’s bulky. It’s heavy and, using the sort of physics you only get out near collapsed stars, somehow it will get heavier with every step I take until I begin leaving footprints in the blacktop. It’s expensive and so it must be jealously guarded at all times. During one New York City visit I slept curled around it, just in case, with a shoelace connecting it to my wrist. Laptops are a pain to keep with you and it’s not like I’ll suddenly need to Photoshop anything, so it’s an easy decision to leave it behind this one time.

And then I take it anyway, along with (say it with me) the charger. And some DVDs, because why not. And the USB hub so I can plug in my mouse and keyboard and clip-on light and heat-absorbing pad and heat-generating coffee coaster and some extra memory cards so I can bring along some more movies and some portable programs and every episode of “Firefly,” just in case, along with an extra card for my camera.

Did I mention the camera? I’ve got a camera.

Hardly takes up any room at all, honestly, even with the extra batteries. And the mini-tripod. And the case. Even with it in there I rarely remember to actually take any photos of whatever I’m doing while I’m doing it, unfortunately, until I get home and unpack and bring out my pristine, unused camera, but should I ever suddenly remember to stop what I’m doing and take a record of me not currently doing it, I’ll be ready. Of course my cell phone takes wonderful pictures all by itself, which could save me bringing an extra device, and I could even look into one of the smartphones that could replace most of this list, but that would just be silly.

But, by dint of careful space management and reprioritization I’ve managed to adapt my packing and traveling ways to accommodate these new additions: I no longer bring the clothing.

Except for my shoes. I’ll need the laces.