I really like this song. I heard it several times in Bali in November, so at first I was listening to it because it reminded me of that part of my trip. Lately, however, it has become a sad song, because it has been swirling around my head during all this bad news, the background music to my dawning realization that my dream is over.
My dream being to travel the world for the next 2+ years while working online, that is.
I was going to go to Mexico City in late June/July, then on to Medellin in Colombia, and Santiago, Chile and maybe Costa Rica and Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires again, and Paraguay, and anywhere else I found along the way.
Instead, I’m stuck in this city that I don’t want to be in. (No offense, Toronto.) I don’t know when I’ll be able to leave. And it’s making me sad.
Plan A, travel, is out.
Plan B, living at “home,” is out, for non-pandemic-related yet still sadness-inducing reasons.
So it’s on to plan C: renting a new apartment, furnishing it with new stuff (after I already intentionally got rid of all my apartment stuff last year so I could travel! Argh!).
And living with… whom? I don’t know!
It’s hard to know what’s a bigger risk to my sanity: living alone (I tend to go crazy after a few weeks of solitude), or living with roommates while trying to work from home with nowhere else to go.
I love how traveling lets me switch between being with friends and being alone whenever I need. And I hate that I don’t have that option anymore!!!!
I know I’ve been super lucky so far during this pandemic, because I still have a place to live, I can work from home, and no one close to me has been seriously ill (yet).
That doesn’t mean I have no grounds for complaint. I HAVE GROUNDS FOR COMPLAINT. Except my frustration has nowhere to go, because I am frustrated at a virus, which doesn’t care.
I feel like around March we were allowed to say “ahh this is scary and it’s okay to be a bit panicked now.” But there hasn’t (to my knowledge) yet been a time when it was like “it’s okay to be depressed even if your life is still objectively pretty good.” NOW, imo, IS THAT TIME.
The point of this post is that it’s okay to grieve for your lost dreams. The point is no matter how relatively lucky you are, everyone has grounds for complaint sometimes, and you (I :P) should be allowed to express them.
So, here are all the blog posts I would like to write but have felt too depressed/demotivated to work on recently:
- How to find colors that look good on you
- Impressions of Tokyo
- + Bali
- + Bangkok
- 5 things Paul Graham should change his mind about
- Some thoughts on the “friend zone”
- What I watch on YouTube
- The best surf movies (+ skiing, climbing, and cycling too)
- How much do you know you know? (How to calibrate your confidence intervals)
- Style advice for sweaty people
They are possibly forthcoming.
And here are two things I’ve found comforting:
- That Discomfort You’re Feeling Is Grief (HBR article)
- Video by Ashley (@bestdressed), a day in my life in quarantine *alone in nyc*
(Featured photo for this post:)

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