The United States of an African

In the words of Alanis Morissette, “life has a funny way of sneaking up on you…life has a funny way of helping you out”. Her song Ironic has been one of the songs on replay in my head. Majority of last year I was unemployed and couldn’t really afford to travel anywhere. I was even a gas miser. I would not leave the house unless for essential commuting; church, interviews, groceries…and eventually driving Lyft. At the time of my termination in March, I had saved enough money to sustain me for six months. But I feared by unemployment would stretch out to a year. Then 2020 came with an awful beginning, but come February things were looking up! I landed an amazing job! Not only was I going to be engaged in challenging and futuristic engineering, I was going to be able to afford to pay off my debts AND TRAVEL!! I created a new budget that included future travels for the year 2020! BLESSED BE!!…Then the pandemic took over the globe. My start date in March kept being postponed as the company was trying to figure out their policies for such events. Then their offices shutdown and I received the email that my employment is on hold for the time being. SO CLOSE!! Eventually the governor placed a Stay At Home order. As of now, the order will be lifted at the end of April. An optimist could say I spent the last year preparing for this! In addition to my already established stay at home skills, I’ve also created content on TikTok, IGTV and YouTube. To be honest, when I do worry, it has been spent on others at risk and those tragically affected.

I could go on and on about the current situation, but this blog post is specifically about all the trips I’ve had to cancel due to the pandemic. Here they are in chronological order:

March 13th-14th: Take a train ride from Detroit, MI to Chicago, IL for St. Patrick’s Day (I’ve never taken the this train route plus St. Patty’s in Chi-town is a big celebration)

May 1st-3rd: Fly down to Atlanta, GA for a family wedding (I miss my family so much)

May 25th: Road trip to Holland, MI for the tulip festival (It might still be too early to cancel this trip even if the festival is cancelled)

I still have many trips planned for Summer and few for Autumn. Majority of my Summer travels are within the State of Michigan. I’m more concerned about my international trips come September. I guess that’s for my next couple blog posts in this series: “Present Plans” and “Future Plans”.

How has quarantine been for you? How are you coping? Have you had to make any changes to routines and plans? Let me know in the comments!