Thankful for COVID-19

Before you get all feisty with me on how COVID-19 has taken away the lives of many and ruined even more of them... Let me remind you that I'm writing what COVID-19 meant for me and only for me. Am I selfish for doing that? Probably. However, if this year taught me anything it is to be selfish. Again, don't start talking to me about wearing masks and washing your hands, I do all that and I'm not talking about ignoring the virus. I'm talking about being selfish in life and always putting myself first. This year taught me self care and appreciation for little things. This year taught me that it's okay to switch off my phone and unplug from the world. It's okay not to pay attention to the world's biggest issues and the whole of humanity falling apart just because it's simply too much to take in. What's most important, thanks to the COVID-19 I took a deep breath, looked inside my soul and realized how much wasted potential there is within me. And I couldn't take it anymore.

You might have read some of my previous posts like: "Falling in love made me a writer" or "5 reasons why I don't like my own book". Both of them were touching the subject on how I self-discovered my inner writer within last year. It's not like I just started writing out of nowhere. No, it's been a long journey and if not for many factors I wouldn't be sitting here today. On a cold Sunday morning, with my laptop set up on the kitchen table with a huge window and a beautiful fall view right in front of me, with a mug of mint tea in my right hand. There's no way that would be me a couple of years ago but here I am, spending my Sunday morning on writing this post. I just had a crazy creativity spur and I had to put in on the paper... well, on my laptop. As I said in my previous posts falling in love and becoming an immigrant made me a writer. I got super creative and finally felt like I had something to say. Still, would I ever be able to put all of that in writing if COVID-19 didn't force me to stay home or gave me the time to think? I don't think so.

Whether we like it or not terrible events in our lives are good for us. There are so many things that happened to my husband and I because of the coronavirus. Our wedding got cancelled, we both lost our jobs at some point, we made some terrible financial decisions, cancelled many trips and almost divorced like a hundred times. We also adopted a puppy and then rescued another one. We finally had time to take a break from our crazy work-focused lives and realized we loved dating each other... so we started going on more dates, more adventures. I came back to school to get my associates degree and we created an office in our old apartment just to keep me motivated . Then we moved closer to the city and I finally started making some friends. I came back to running, started walking miles and miles with our dogs... I finally started feeling in touch with myself again.

The craziest thing of all was for me to discover how much I hated working. All of the things I mentioned above made me rediscover myself. They made me very self-focused and my inner potential started coming out. I was breathing in self care and breathing out new ideas for posts, books or businesses. Finally, I had the time to come up with how to turn my passion into something more and all of that thanks to being furloughed. It’s funny how we focus so much on our jobs and paying our bills and don’t realize how much that takes away from us. I wonder, was I the only one who was so excited about it? For the first time in my life I was forced to stay home and get creative. For the first time in a long time I had time to THINK.

My whole (very short since I'm only 24) adult life I was so sure that a grown up person must work at least 8 hours a day in a respectable work environment to be able to call themselves a grown up. When the coronavirus made me stay at home I realized how amazing it is not to work. I don't mean lay in bed and binge watch Netflix all day. I mean to be simply productive in the environment that I love and in the way I like. At this moment (since I’m back to a job I hate) not being able to write all day whenever I want to seems to cause me excruciating pain. Leaving home for work gives me so much anxiety it’s insane. Thanks to that I know that I'll do anything to become a full time writer as soon as possible. I think that's the most important lesson of all this year... I don't need a 9-5 job in order to be an adult person. I need to be able to do what I love for living to be one. I need to choose myself. I need to find away to turn my passion into my rent money and that's the key to adulthood. Working the job you hate is not being a grown up... it's just giving up on yourself.

Tis the season to be thankful, right? So sue me, but thank you COVID-19 for making me stop. I stopped and looked around. I saw a very unhappy person chasing a stereotype of what she should be at the age of 24. I saw a girl who couldn’t become a real writer just because she couldn’t pay the bills from it… I stopped and realized I couldn' breathe anymore making everyone else happy while leaving myself out of the equation. I stopped and saw how beautiful the world is and now I know... I don't want to run anymore. I want to walk for hours, for days and for years and I want to enjoy the damn view. I want to sit down, write a book that probably will be highly unsuccessful and won’t pay my bills at all and then write another one. I want to look outside of this huge window behind my laptop while writing it. I want to take a mug of tea in my hands, breathe in the minty smell and smile while pressing the “SUBMIT” button for another post I wrote on Sunday morning in the year of 2020.