Month: August 2020

Moving During a Pandemic: My Life as a Disney Princess

Samantha DeSpirito

Hi again friends!

So last week’s post was all about following long held dreams of moving to Nashville and all the excitement that came with it. Now that I’ve been here two months it’s time to talk to talk about reality: moving to a new city is always hard. Moving during a global pandemic, well that’s just not something I think you can even prepare for (or would even think to prepare for).  It honestly hasn’t been all bad, and in the spirit of gratitude there are LOTS of things about my situation to be thankful for, but moving has definitely looked different than it did back in January 2020.

I titled this post my life as a Disney Princess for a couple reasons, besides a deep love of all things Disney. First and foremost,  I’m probably a few more weeks or quarantine away from the woodland creatures (quite fittingly deer, bunnies and squirrels) that surround my apartment complex starting to talk back to me. I also currently have the Snow White haircut – might be worth seeing if the woodland creatures want to come in and clean my apt for me.  The whole stay inside and don’t socialize brings Repunzel and Belle to mind too. I’ve definitely had lots of time to read! (Sam’s Book Nook will be launching this week too!).

In some practical ways this move was one of the least stressful moves I’ve undertaken. Mostly because it was SO necessary and exciting! I mentioned briefly last post, I lost my job due to coronovirus, which while job loss will probably be a topic of its own at some point – this left me lots of time to pack up my apartment and then unpack here in Nashville and do all the tasks like changing your license and registration and running all the errands. Also because of coronavirus, I have never had so much to time focus on fitness! And socially –  we’re all communicating digitally so it hasn’t been as unusual to FaceTime friends or watch church online; it really kept my social meter full and like I was engaged in my community. To anyone else living alone currently – a friend of mine and I instituted weekly weekend FaceTime “pajama chats” – HIGHLY recommend.

In other ways, this move was one of the hardest. Saying “goodbye” to Miami was basically reduced to a Facebook post or phone calls, not the one-on-one conversation or last goodbye coffees and dinners. My amazing friends did host a surprise socially -distant gathering before I left that left me pretty speechless, but after 12 years, I just unceremoniously got in the car and drove to Nashville. The pandemic also meant no family or friends to make the drive with, and making an already isolating experience just a little more isolating. Just for some levity – if you know me you know how much I thrive on live music – the irony that the year I move to Nashville will be the year I don’t attend any concerts – the irony is not lost on me. There’s a lesson in here somewhere and when I learn it I will blog about it.

Then all the errands were done, the new furniture was built and it was time to figure out how to productively spend my time because job hunting 24/7 is not practical and one can’t (okay – shouldn’t) watch bad made-for-TV movies all day.  I’m on the more introverted side of the spectrum, but we’re just not meant to be alone with our thoughts for SO LONG. How do you find your people when you’re told to stay inside and that people are scary and germy? Luckily I moved to a city where I at least know a few people who have braved social interactions and make sure I left the apartment occasionally (you know who you are and I CANNOT THANK YOU ENOUGH).  In July,  I finally  found a church that does social distancing fairly well and started volunteering in and around Nashville.  A note on church though – I had not been new to a church in over a decade and trying to be new while wearing a mask and everything being so topsy-turvy…. it’s been an experience. However,  all of this has forced me to step WAY outside my comfort zone and engage in the digital world through meet up groups and other fun groups with similar interests/life stages/etc.

I think I’ll leave it there for today – just some musings on moving during the plaque and a little encouragement to anyone quarantining on their own! Some minutes it’s the best, some minutes it’s the absolute worst. A good reminder we basically have no control over anything and need to live in the moment.

Come on and we’ll sing, like we were free. Push the pedal down, watch the world around fly by us. Come on and we’ll try, one last time. I’m off of the floor one more ty to find you.

And here we go, there’s nothing left to choose. And here we go, there’s nothing left to lose.

I can still hear the trains out my window. From Hobart street to here in Nashville. I can still smell the pomegranates grow. And I don’t know how hard this wind will blow. Or where we’ll go

Mat Kearney “Nothing Left to Lose”

Everyone in Nashville has a moving to Nashville story and this is mine

Samantha DeSpirito

There are lots of milestones that make up a year. There are birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, kids , or in my case, friend’s having kids, and my personal favorites – trips and concerts. I’m 100% aware with the current global pandemic that these are first world indulgences temporarily delayed due to the ‘Rona, but if you’ll allow me a moment of nostalgia here for crowded concerts and airplanes – all I can ask is, is it 2021 yet. I promise to NEVER complain about the middle seat on the airplane or that 6’5″ person standing in front of my 5-foot self at a concert ever again.

 Or it could be one of those years made complete with burnout, financial and/or job stress, divorce, or loss. Considering the complexity of life, it’s probably some combination of all those highs and lows until all of a sudden it’s New Year’s Eve again and you wonder how on earth a whole year has gone by again and what have you been doing with your life.

Let’s rewind a moment to summer 2019. I had just turned 30, and even though I probably wouldn’t have said so at the time, that was the catalyst for some major life changes. I really don’t think one’s life goal is merely to be “happy”, life is hard and you sometimes you have to buck up and endure, but it was becoming abundantly clear some changes needed to take place and risks needed to be taken  or nothing was going to change. If you don’t know me personally – Enneagram 1 here, so obviously to make a trillion percent sure it was the right move or my life would be a complete failure. Same thing with this blog actually…

Downtown Nashville on my exploratory trip – remember when we could wander around in crowds wthout masks?

But back to the story at hand and some background on Nashville;  I moved to Miami in 2007 to study Music Business and Entertainment at the []_[] and had kinda always intended to end up in Nashville, or knew I was supposed to be there. After college the economy was crap (the more things change…) and opportunities to stay in Miami kept arising, so that’s what I did. I had an amazing church, great friends, the beach less than 30 minutes away, a roof over my head,  and gainful employment. But anyone who knows me knows Nashville has always been on the “at some point I should do this” list, so in the fall of 2019 I told my roommate at the end of the lease I’d be relocating to Nashville, started the process to relocate with my job at the time, and everything that  happened between that fall and summer 2020 seemed only confirm that Nashville 2020 was going to be a thing. Because what’s the worst that can happen (yeah, I don’t recommend asking this question), and honestly, if Nashville wasn’t all I wanted it to be I could always move back to Florida – being single with no kids, pretty easy to move around, and it would be better to try Nashville and find out it wasn’t form me than wake up in 10 years wondering what my life would have looked like if I just taken the risk.

If past-Sam had only known.  2020 began with such promise (ok, fine, this year still has promise, it’s just a little bonkers and I’m salty about it.)  I planned a trip to Nashville for President’s Day weekend to scout out places to live and make sure I could see myself there and was going to uproot my reasonable comfortable life. Also,  I needed to make sure I experienced Nashville winter because 12 years in Miami makes one forget things like seasons and winter coats. I spent 5 days out here, found an apartment (bookmark this – it’s important), went to the BlueBird Cafe,  explored the Parthenon in Centennial Park, went to the BEST independent book store owned by one of my favorite authors and honestly had more fun as a solo traveler than I would have thought (another topic for another post). I landed back in the MIA  and before even leaving the MIA airport instantly had the “ugh, send me back to Nashville” moment, so that’s what I pursued.

Almost exactly two weeks after that trip, a devastating tornado roared through Nashville in the middle of the night, even destroying a place a friend and I had eaten lunch while I was in town. Two weeks after that, this random novel virus that had been on the other side of the world found its way to America and the only way to describe it is the world exploded. A month after that trip, my job was a casualty of the coronovirus pandemic. However, since I had found an apartment in Nashville on my exploratory trip, I was able to put my faith to the test and still move to TN.  Remember when I said bookmark the apt – it was important- well had I not come that weekend, there would have been no apartment scouting trips. I found an apartment in February that was available for exactly when I needed it in June and because of that, instead of moving back in with the parents when I lost my job, I was able to fulfill that thirteen year goal of moving to Nashville.

To keep this from turning into a novel, stay tuned for part two of this series – Moving During a Pandemic

But no matter how far these songs take me, If my dreams come true or the heart aches break me,

No matter where I make my bed, I long for you.

Tennessee

Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors “Tennessee”

The Evolution of Coronavirus: Canceled Calendars, Masks, and Immuno-compromised Siblings

Samantha DeSpirito
Universal Studios on the last day they were open before lockdown 3/15/2020

One of the goals of my blog is to share the experience of those of us who have siblings with special needs. So now let’s talk about being a sibling of someone with special needs during a global pandemic. I obviously can only speak to my experience, but my sister is a heart transplant recipient. Breaking this down a little further, this means a suppressed immune system, which means that anything that there’s no vaccine for is scary. For those who may have no experience with something like this, you or I get the flu, we’re in bed or on the couch for a week, she gets the flu, HOSPITAL – so thank you in advance for social distancing and wearing a mask, it’s really not THAT hard, right?

My family was actually monitoring coronavirus before it even got here because of all of the above. Fun fact- by March 1st I was already over talking about the ‘the Rona … yep, fun times for me over here now that it’s July…. Anyway, back in another lifetime,  my Mom and sister were supposed  to fly  down in late March from MD and meet me in Orlando where we were going to experience all that Wizarding World of Harry Potter magic at Universal Studios. Now, as a reasonable adult who can adapt my thinking based on new information, I’ll admit when this all started (early Feb 2020) I didn’t think it was the world’s biggest deal. Not that I wasn’t taking it seriously, but I honestly remember saying “Oh my gosh people, just wash your hands and you’ll be fine”.  Jokes totally on me, I know, but having never lived thru a pandemic before, who would have known?

We started re-evaluating the trip (spoiler alert – it got cancelled, or as I like to say, Rona-ed), but it went about this way:

-Mid to Late Feb: we’re not going to cancel – just going to bring some extra hand sanitizer and lysol wipes for my sisters wheelchair and the handlebars of rides, etc.  There had hardly been ANY cases in the US yet

-Late Feb: cases start popping up, ok – maybe Mom and my sister will drive instead of fly, the airplane is a tube of germs but we have a little more control in the park, right? Still such a still minimal risk

-First week of March: time to cancel  – even if we can go no one’s going to have fun and it’s just not worth the risk, so let’s reschedule, maybe for like May? It’ll all be over by then right (anyone else shaking their heads here with me?)

-The park closed anyway, all reservations got cancelled and we went into quarantine/lockdown/these unprecedented times

Ok, first-world problems, we had to cancel a trip (which especially sad since I don’t live near my family and haven’t seen them since December). But I want to take the evolution of cancelling our trip to highlight some other elements lurking below the surface here. My personal experience with Coronavirus went from, “Ok, be vigilant in hand washing and we’ll all be fine” to thinking my sister could be in the hospital on a ventilator in a matter of weeks. I admittedly can be a worst case scenario person with a bit of flair for the dramatic at times, but the ‘Rona got real, real fast. My sister remains perfectly healthy because my parents follow CDC guidelines and she’s hardly left the house since March, but that doesn’t mitigate the seriousness of it.

The low-death rate of Covid-19 and the mentality of “I might get sick but won’t die” is all well and good until someone who’s close to you is part of the at risk population. Now we all have to assess our own risk, and the economic implications and all that other stuff that makes this such a complicated issue, but that’s not what this post is about.

I’ve been lonely, bored and, because I don’t live with my sister and had to move during this craziness, taken some risks I probably wouldn’t have if I saw her on the daily.  In the spirit of my Faith, I refuse to live in fear, but there’s a healthy balance between not panicking about Coronavirus and being safe and smart (is this where I mention social distancing and masks again? – just making sure you’re following along). For those of us with at-risk family members, this is some of the real life and death considerations we are dealing with in addition to the toilet paper crisis, working from home or job loss/instability, and the general upheaval.  I cannot think of a single person that Coronoa has not impacted in some way or another, but to anyone else caring for or worried about their at risk loved ones, you are definitely not alone.

It’s a mystery, I suppose, Just how long this thing goes, But there’ll be crowds and there’ll be shows, And there will be a light after dark

Someday when we aren’t six feet apart

Luke Combs “6 Feet Apart”