A very good place to start
It’s been so long I’m surprised I remembered the password to this thing!
Last I wrote, we were a few weeks into what has now become a global, nearly two-year pandemic. I was in Michigan, working weekends and bummed that restaurants were closed. And also perpetually cold because, well, Michigan. I felt stunted, halted. I was ready for a new work challenge, I missed my family, 14 hours away. I missed seeing the world and so many other things that I took for granted long before COVID-19.
In my head I like to think of that as my cocoon phase. Basically I was a caterpillar wrapped in the silk of my own thoughts, pushing myself through pain and way out of my comfort zone to shift into something that I couldn’t quite envision until it was done but I knew would be different.
And oh, how different it is.
Now I’m writing this from Florida, a shorter (8-hour) drive from family and most importantly, less than an hour from the nearest beach. Instead of brushing snow off my car, I’m drinking iced coffee because it’s still 61 degrees out. Though, to be fair, I was committed to iced coffee even in polar vortexes. The Midwest will change a person.
Life is so different here. I can go into any store, any restaurant or coffee shop feeling mostly safe with a mask on. Vaccines and boosters have allowed me to breathe a little easier when in crowds. Shout out to science.
I’m writing this from my first solo apartment after 12 years as a roommate. It has houseplants and candles and tchotchkes from as far as Egypt (thanks to dear friends). It is, however, lacking in Christmas decorations. I plan to fix that this weekend.
I’m writing this as I’m supposed to get ready for work, at a station where my metamorphosis went into overdrive during the last year. The journalist I am now looks nothing like the journalist I was a year ago. But there’s more growing to do and I’m excited to do it in a new role, one unlike any I’ve ever had as a working professional, where I get to think big, really big. The butterfly phase continues.
Many of us are looking ahead to 2022 and thinking about resolutions. I’ll share mine another time maybe, but for now I leave you with this: you can count on more early-morning thoughts, quick recaps of little adventures, and some beach footage here and there (as long as I have the patience to deal with crowds over the winter).
Stay tuned!
