Oh, 2020. How does one sum up this year? Wild. Unexpected. Amazing. Terrible. Heartbreaking. Heartwarming. Brilliant. Awful. Lovely. Horrid. It was everything, and nothing at the same time. It was… an adventure.
January
2020 started with a bang, and not an incredibly nice one to say the least. I lost my job for the first time in the year, due to the venue closing shortly after New Year’s. But I’ve tried really hard to look at it as a blessing in disguise, because I was, quite honestly, burnt the f*ck out. So I did what any overly-exhausted, recently-unemployed, totally-unaware-of-the-absolute-insanity-the-rest-of-the-year-would-bring twenty something girl would do and I spent my three weeks of funemployment getting a kitten, buying a wildly expensive new couch, and playing through pretty much all of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
February
I started my new job! For what would end up being all of six weeks, but still! And by new, I mean new-old job, because I was offered a management position back at Bathtub Gin, which is somehow the most consistent thing/place/job I’ve had since moving to NYC. (It’s also where I met my fiancé, so I’m not that mad about it.) I think I’ve actually worked there in some capacity or another every single year since I moved here, which is kind of crazy to think about. Even though it only ended up being for a short time, I’m incredibly proud of what going back to this job meant this time. Because once upon a time, a very long time ago, I was an administrative assistant there and I trained about a thousand hosts because well, let’s just say that people didn’t stay at BTG for very long back then. And one day, I was told I’d be training two people at the same time, which was beyond annoying to me at the time. I’ll never remember who the other person was and she probably didn’t even stay at the job longer than a week, but the other stayed and persevered through the absolute madness that job was. And at some point, we were the only ones left standing and running the damn place. So yes, going back to this job actually meant a lot to me.
March
Well, we all know what happened in March. I spent my last weekend of employment in a packed bar frantically trying to keep my employees safe since customers didn’t seem to care (Oh, does that sound familiar?). I found out we were closing “indefinitely” in the middle of our burlesque show on a Sunday night, and at the time, our idea of indefinitely ranged from a couple weeks to my guess of about July – ha ha. We cleared out the entire bar, sent our employees home with everything perishable, and went home to, well, stay home. And, in my and Wilmer’s case, immediately get COVID. Or rather, have fairly mild symptoms while still insisting to my mom over the phone between coughs that it probably wasn’t Coronavirus, and then one day wake up completely unable to smell or taste anything and decide that yeah, we probably, most likely, definitely had it.
April
Animal Crossing, kitty snugs, Zoom happy hours, and Dalgona Coffee. Oh, and I turned 30. But birthdays in quarantine don’t count, okay? Dyed my hair teal too, because quarantine.
May
We finally started leaving the house and walking everywhere. Home Depot for supplies? Walk there. Supporting our friends back at work by buying to-go cocktails at their bar windows? Walk there. Absolutely nowhere and just needing to get out of the house? Walk there. Wilmer cooked and cooked and cooked the most delicious food ever, and I painted rooms, rearranged furniture, and hung things that had needed to be hung for years and never got around to it. We were also finally eligible for testing, and I tested positive for antibodies, confirming what I already knew, that I had Covid in March.
June
I’ve always been a fairly outspoken person in regard to my political beliefs, but the BLM protests this summer really brought it to a head. What I experienced marching and protesting with my city was powerful and beautiful. I saw Americans standing up for what is right and just, I saw them fighting back against years of systemic abuse, questioning roles and “power”. I saw the America that I am proud of rise, and I realized that individual action isn’t fruitless, and can and did lead to a movement.
July
Found antibacterial wipes, hand sanitizer, and toilet paper readily available for the first time in five months. My favorite person in the whole wide world had a quarantine birthday, which as we have already discussed did not count as a real birthday. We watched fireworks on a rooftop in Brooklyn, which is as quintessentially New York as it gets, had so many and somehow still not enough beach days, and oh yes, TAYLOR SWIFT DROPPED A SURPRISE ALBUM ON US!! The world wasn’t ready. I wasn’t ready. It was perfect. ♥
August
Our 90-year-old living room ceiling decided that the middle of a pandemic was an excellent time to cave in, and did so. Beach days turned into day-drinking park days (minus one last beach adventure that ended up with us skinny dipping in the ocean because my little tipsy brain decided I simply cannot go through life never having gone for a skinny dip!), and we even ventured out to New Jersey to go to a farm. But I think my absolute favorite moment of August was going to see Andrew McMahon live. An actual, in-person, live music, drive-in concert! Sitting on top of a car, parked next to my childhood best friend who first introduced me to Something Corporate, singing along to all my favorite songs was just… lovely.
September
Chopped off ten inches of my hair and oh yeah, WE GOT ENGAGED! One magical September day, my lovely boyfriend attempted to get me to go to Coney Island with him and my stubborn self said no, so instead we got tacos, went to Prospect Park, and then all of the sudden, he dropped on one knee and asked me to be his forever sushi partner, his forever taco partner, and his wife. And I said yes (and cried a lot of happy tears, but shhh)! ♥ ♥ ♥ Our amazing friends gave us the best surprise pandemic engagement celebrations, which turned into more crying from me, because if there’s anything this year taught us, it’s to be so incredibly grateful for those who have stuck with us through everything.
October
I got dressed up for the first time since March to celebrate another didn’t-actually-happen-because-quarantine-birthdays-don’t-count birthday, went to a drive-in movie overlooking the Manhattan skyline (it never gets old), and we exercised our right to vote by voting early! I maybe, quite possibly also drank the most I did all of quarantine because damn were those debates hard to watch. Oh, and took the train for the first time since March and saw a man in only a thong, painted like a rainbow, which was really the best return to the subway a California turned New York girl could ever ask for.
November
Nothing else in November could top the moment that Biden was announced as the projected winner of the election. I even got chills just typing that. I was still in bed when I started hearing cheering coming from outside, and a split second of ‘What could we possibly be cheering about right now?’ turned into ‘Oh my god, WE DID IT!’ I sat on my windowsill, drank pink champagne at 11am, and cried more happy tears while all of Brooklyn celebrated in the streets. It was absolutely magical to experience.
December
And here we are, the final day of this chaotic, life changing, beyond bizarre year. I don’t like the circumstances and every part of this pandemic hurts – to have to see people’s families and lives ripped apart by a virus, to see my friends struggling, to have my own livelihood vanish, to witness people’s inhumanity come to light – it all hurts. But somehow in all of it, I got a little bit of myself back. I learned how important a proper work-life balance is to me, and even though it’s a lot more life than work right now, it won’t always be that way, and it was well overdue for how many years I spent doing all work and no life. My relationship got so much better because for the first time in a long time, we got to focus on us instead of everything else. I came back to blogging regularly (okay, I’m still working on that part) and let it be seen by the world. I had time to do all the little projects I’ve been wanting to do to make our apartment an actual home that we wouldn’t mind spending all of quarantine in. And Taylor Swift blessed us with yet another surprise album drop.
I’m happy. All in all, despite everything, 365 days later, I am actually happy. And that, my friends, is magical. ♡
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