The Stuff in Between
My oh my, 2020 has been quite a year. While my mind has thousands of simultaneous thoughts and emotions that come with a global pandemic and a social injustice movement, that’s not what I’m writing about in this particular post. Instead, I wanted to ramble on about what’s been going on in between. So take this post as a very compartmentalized glimpse of my life over the last few months.
Brett has continued to fly for work (he’s a corporate pilot) and has been as precautious as he can possibly be with sanitizing and such - that is all we can do. My work (I am a Brand Manager for luxury apartments) has been quite busy - with things shutting down, there’s been hundreds upon hundreds of videos and virtual tours created and advertised; extra communications going out to stakeholders; adapting to every submarket’s needs, etc. It makes me feel extra thankful to work for a good company and with good people.
But I will say, it has been pretty weird to not have work travel. I haven’t been on a plane since the second week of March, which is an extremely long time for me! I miss the shakeup and changeup that comes with breaking your routine. But it’s also been a nice break as it has really allowed me to spend time exploring my (relatively new) city, Providence, Rhode Island.
Brett and I moved here at the end of November and signed a short term lease at a beautiful building downtown, called Providence G (I highly recommend!). In the meantime, we kept in touch with our real estate agent, who ultimately presented us with a wonderful happy house that we bought and moved into in April.
This house is the perfect compromise for Brett and I. It is a single-family home with a yard (Brett’s wishes) and it is located in a really cool neighborhood and we can walk to tons of shops and restaurants and parks (my wishes). It’s a dutch colonial that was built in the 1940’s - it has some old house charm to it (Brett’s wishes), but with nearly all of the modern bells and whistles (my wishes). We are unbelievably grateful that we can live in such a home!
We have made friends with a small group of people through our gym who have gone above and beyond to welcome us and embrace us. It’s crazy to think I have had a much better social life during a quarantine than I did while living in Newburyport, MA and Portsmouth, NH. Here, people are excited to meet new people and quickly invite them into their circles. The difference has been night and day. I can’t reiterate enough how much happier I am here for that reason alone. I choke up thinking about how kind people have been to us here in Rhody.
I am SO glad we didn’t let other people’s sentiments about our decision to move again deter us. The opinions we received from people who reacted negatively at the number of times Brett and I have moved since coming back to the states was somewhat shocking. I think it is fair for people to be surprised and to even jokingly tell me how exhausted they are at the idea of it. But to essentially deem the moves as “foolish” or “brash?” To me, it is far less rational to continue to live in a place that makes you feel miserable and lonely. Why would I allow feeling like that last any longer than absolutely necessary?
Life is too short to live in a place that doesn’t invigorate you or make you proud to be a part of that particular community. To me, that is settling - which is something that is absolutely against every fiber of my existence. Brett and I could not be any more delighted by the house, the neighborhood, the city, and the wonderful people we have met so far in Providence. We are so happy to have a place that we can call home.
