Before I start this particular blog post after a year+ hiatus, it would be dishonest of me to skip through my emotional landscape during late 2021 and the first half of 2022 up to this point. So let me be as honest as I can be, it has been tough. When I say tough, I am not meaning a few bad days. I meant months of tears, I meant waking up in agony and going to sleep filled with devastation. I meant sitting inside the wide range of my emotions -promising myself that I am making the right decision(s) based on thoughtful considerations and not mere reactions. I have relentlessly asked myself over and over on the values I want to hold onto and ultimately-irrevocably-the kind of person I want to be.

Y’all, can you believe it is middle of the year 2021? It is a bit crazy to think that we are halfway through the year! I am personally glad we made it through the gloomiest longest winter days of Pacific Northwest and entering sunshine-y days. As I wrote this, time is feeling a bit warpy, did we endure two pandemic winters or only one? Personally I am still feeling wary of the society. I don’t see myself and Juan forgoing masks, especially indoors public places. The bright side is, I am hearing in the past week and today that Washington State (Seattle) is at 49.6% fully vaccinated rate.

Hello y’all! It has been a little bit since my last post here. Life has been quietly hectic. As the country is (slowly or way-too-rapidly depending on your stance - mine is the latter) opening up again I’ve been feeling rather unsettled about going back to general society. Sure, We have done small road-trips during the pandemic - mostly hiking trips - but we haven’t done anything as extended as this particular one which is 4 Days in a Lodge!

Summer of Quarantine 2020

Summer went by in a blip. There were lots of cooking, zoom calls, social distance outdoors with a few close friends, reading and long walks in the sun absorbing as much sun as we possibly can before PNW fall and winter locked us inside again. Around this time, I had an idea of making and printing postcards to send to my loved ones all around the country. We knew it’s going to be at least another year or so of quarantine from this point on and I wanted a way to connect other than video calls. I’ve always been so fond of snail-mails for the tactile feel and excitement I get from getting cards or notes when I opened my mailbox - it makes perfect sense.

This March 2021 marked a whole year in quarantine. Time moves differently in quarantine. Slow and fast in ways that are wholly inconsistent and unpredictable. In the beginning of quarantine, I felt agitated, angry, sad, frustrated, trapped and sometimes all of those feelings at once. Looking back, my agitations came from knowing - deep in my gut - living in the individualistic society like the United States means it will take so much longer to escape self-imposed quarantine we have to do. But that in itself is an oversimplification of what I’ve been feeling brewing underneath my skin for a while now.