Wow. It has been a
wild 2 ½ years! Who’da thunk that a few
months after my very first cruise in December 2019, the world would come to a
complete stop because of a pandemic. That
one of the first incidents to mark the strange year to come was that the very
ship I was on, the Grand Princess, was the same ship that got held up off the
coast of California because of the rising Covid cases onboard. That what was originally supposed to be a few
months of quarantine turned into a few years with no real end in sight.
I still vividly remember the email sent out by my employer
on that Tuesday, March 10, 2020. To
paraphrase: ‘Management has officially determined that ^&*(: has hit the fan. Take your laptops home and don’t come back to
work until we say it’s safe.’ Um.
Okay. I worked from home for the
next few days terrified of even leaving the house for groceries and trying to
soak up as much info as I could find. At
the time, it was expected that we’d return to the office by the end of the month. Then it was the end of May. Then it was July. Then it was …
I got used to the ‘new normal’ as the world descended into hell. My work station had already been set up for my
regular work from home Thursdays. Online
meetings with my teammates kept me connected to the outside world and the work load
continued as usual. The fact that I’m a
loner with no social life made the adjustment much easier.
As uncertain as those first few weeks were, I certainly did
not miss being in Atlanta traffic. I had
already started my year off with an accident in January that totaled my car –
the second car of mine to be destroyed by someone else’s stupidity. I’d purchased my first ever new vehicle that
same month which was great, but there was always that nagging fear that this
car, too, would get hit. Quarantine took
care of that fear nicely. Instead of spending
2-3 hours a day, 4 days a week driving the 25 miles to and from work, I now
spend less than an hour a week in the car.
I went from spending around $100 a month on gas to filling up the car
maybe once every 3 months. My local grocery store is only a mile away and an
easy walk on sunny days. As much as I
like my new car, I don’t mind that I’ve barely put 5,000 miles on it in 2 ½ years.
In some ways, I was designed for quarantine. I’ve never required human company and now
that I see everyone as teeming with virus, I got no problem staying away from
them. I busied myself with crafts and
remained grateful every day that I still had a job, a roof over my head, and had
avoided getting sick.
But now … I’m feeling a little restless. 2022 is coming to an end and I’m ready to
break out of my bubble. Other than a
couple of trips to Hilton Head (still love that place) in 2021 and 2022, travel
has been placed on the back burner. I’ve
barely written anything in the last 3 years. I turned 49 during quarantine, then 50, and
now at 51 I’ve had more than enough time to think about what I want to do with
the rest of my life. It’s time to get
back to my passions, beginning with updating this blog more regularly. I’m planning my first post-Covid international
trip to Portugal in November. Wish me
luck.
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