Covid thoughts

Prologue: I wrote these thoughts during COVID. One in July 2020 and another one in May 2021. It was a weird time for everyone. Aside from the fact I really suffered from the lack of travel freedom, I also discovered how peaceful and balanced life can be when everything we take for granted, gets limited or even forbidden. It’s quite funny to read them next to each other and compare.

In 2020 I was working as a customer service agent and in 2021 I had a job as managing consultant in an employment agency with the freedom to work remote, but it just didn’t feel completely right yet.

A day in July 2020

One of those days

It´s one of those days, maybe it´s actually a whole week where I just can´t seem to see the good in life. In the past few months a lot and a little happened. All at the same time.

After coming home from D.C. I thought I was going to get lost in doing nothing. But then my parents bought the cutest puppy who turned into a little villain and desperately needed some proper training. I looked after her for the first few weeks she moved in with my parents. In the meantime I was trying to make myself useful by setting challenges like: learning to speak Portuguese, learn to do the splits, apply for jobs, look where I wanted to go from there, etc. It was a difficult time because it was quite a challenge to find a job in hospitality or anything else for that matter. In the end I did find a job in a customer care company for Zalando. It’s something at minimal wage and a place I get excited to go to at the beginning of a day. It brings along the biggest frustrations but it’s really nice to be in touch with people again and have a purpose in a day whilst making (though little) money.

The past week was a tough one though. I slipped into negative thoughts and couldn’t get myself out of it. It might have had to do with the ‘corona scare’ I had when I developed a throat ache and a fever. I took the necessary measurements and went for a test. I was obligated to stay home to wait for the results and I felt trapped in the house with no structure anymore. I felt sick, but not sick enough to stay home at first. The fever gradually got worse and I felt like I just had to sleep a lot and lost all my energy. The next day, on my day to work I was struggling with the walk there. I couldn’t cope with the useless feeling I had the days prior and I refused to give in to the fact that my body was fighting a virus. Luckily it wasn’t corona though.

These are times where I get pulled away from daily structure and start questioning everything. I'd put focus on the wrong things and get restless for no reason. These are the times where I drink to calm and go to a happier place and also where I drift off in my mind to places where I’d rather be at that point. The one go-to happy place for me is a beach a sunset. My absolute goal in life is to live near the coast and live and own a hostel for travellers. I know this sounds like a goal many people have, but for me happiness is connected to being close to nature. It gives me energy, a purpose and a clear head. Whenever I feel trapped or lost my mind goes there immediately. The scary thing with corona is that those places feel unreachable. Travelling is frowned upon and this is the one things that can give me a feeling of being free. I love living at my brother though. It’s so nice to get to know him again and we are still catching up on making up for the lack of quality time in the past 10 years. We get along great, share deep feelings and thoughts and he is my rock for now. Aside from this I do miss the freedom, the feeling I can go anywhere at any time. I just want to buy a ticket to Barcelona or wherever.

A day in May 2021

The past year

You know, sometimes it´s difficult to just start writing a story. There needs to be a reason, a source of inspiration and I think I got lost in that in the past year. My inspiration was usually activated by travelling and I feel like I haven´t done any travelling in a long time.

Though, when I zoom in on last year, I travelled to Portugal 3 times after coming back from almost a year in the States. Is that really a year without travelling?

If you ask me, it gets difficult when the feasibility to travel is taken away and covid took that feasibility to travel freely away. It was semi-possible to go to some destinations, but it didn’t feel appealing anymore. At some point, I felt trapped in my mind and dreams where I just took off wherever I wanted, whenever I wanted and in reality, I was doing my job and living a very sober, structured life. Which is not a bad life. It isn’t bad at all. I just felt restless, there is this bug inside of me that needs the opportunity, at least, to buy a ticket somewhere and just take off for a while.

I like combining work and travel. With my job, it’s easy to work from wherever I want, as long as I am in an appropriate time zone, close to the Dutch one This is a huge deal for me, to have a job where I can travel. It was the main reason I took it. I think short vacations are fun too, but a two-week getaway would feel like a way to fool myself into having a lifestyle I want to have full time, which I don’t. What I like to do instead is taking my laptop and just take off for a longer time. Going to a beautiful place along the coast for a month, 6 weeks, maybe longer and just enjoy the sunshine after work and during the weekends. In a two-week gap, I would feel trapped in a rushed feeling where I have to make the most out of that time slot, because after it, it will all be over for another year.

Am I weird about this? Yes, maybe I am a little. It’s an incurable friendly bug that got stuck inside of me during a trip to Lisbon with some girlfriends back in 2014. After that I travelled to Australia by myself and after that, it just didn’t stop. It’s not like I want to jump on a plane right now, but it would give me a peace of mind for it to at least be an option.

I am really wondering how other ‘travellers’ experienced and are still experiencing this and how they cope with that feeling of being a little lost and stuck.

Xoxo Domi