Quoting myself from 2020

One very fun thing about keeping any kind of journal or written record of your life is being able to look back on it.

Since we are sitting right around the 1 year mark now for the whole Coronavirus situation exploding in our faces, I decided to look back on what I was thinking at this time last year. If you’ve been reading this blog a while, you probably know my family had a huge, long awaited trip planned to Europe on March 12, 2020. We were supposed to see my sister and family who live in Ireland, then spend a week in Paris and a few days in Amsterdam.

Bits from my daily highlight journal (early 2020)

1/28/20: Talked to J (my sister). Got our Eiffel Tower tickets! Yay!

2/25/20: Texting with J again. Some real concern now about this coronavirus spreading to Europe from China. Worried this could affect our trip….

2/26/20: Read a bunch of stuff online about coronavirus in Paris. Seems mostly ok at the moment but I don’t know what’s really happening.

3/1/20: Texting with J. News update that the Louvre has closed now. omg.

3/7/20: Started laying clothes out for our trip today. So confused what to do. CV spreading bad in Europe right now. So worried. This sucks so bad. News reports today showing Italy on a major lockdown now, but currently Ireland and Paris are ok and all still mostly open. Louvre is back open.

3/9/20: Did some more CV reading this morning. I don’t know what to do!! Called airline and AirBnB- they WILL NOT let us cancel our flights or airbnb in Paris. !!!! I guess for now planning to try to at least just go to J’s in Ireland and skip Paris/ Amsterdam…will be out so much $$ for AirBnB in Paris! This is horrible. Situation sounds terrible in Italy. Entire country shutting down apparently. This is nuts. So disappointing and scary.

3/11/20: Supposed to leave tomorrow. 8 pm- Trump’s speech stated ALL travel currently banned between Europe & U.S now. Guess that settles it. So sad.

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Ha. I hope you can sense the confusion I was experiencing. We all were confused, I’m sure, at that time. Looking back, it all seems so clear. OF COURSE our trip was going to need to be cancelled. But that’s only because hindsight is always 20/20. In the moment, I assure you, it was not clear. It was chaos. NOBODY fully knew what the heck was actually happening, and NOBODY could probably truly imagine that it was going to escalate to the level it did.

I’ll never forget those days leading up to our trip….I had the worst headache of my life for days on end, because I was just stressed.

(Looking back, I feel that my journal entries also come across as very “selfish”. My main concern appears to be my trip, my disappointment, my financial loss. It was! I was feeling selfish. I admit it. At that particular moment in time, the reality of the devastating loss that we were facing in the world was just not totally clear yet. It was hard to really even fathom, since it was such uncharted territory. All I knew for sure was that this extremely special trip we had planned was crumbling in front of us and we had no idea really about all the rest yet.)

Anyway, it’s interesting to look back on, that’s for sure. I can’t believe it’s been a year!

Someday…..(I don’t know when)…..we WILL take that trip!!! Ireland, Paris, and Amsterdam, we’re coming for you. 😉

Daily Gratitude:

I am grateful for my little journal with tidbits of my life to look back on!