Catching Up
These past couple days have been busy despite quarantine and I’ve been gathering up some things to say to you. I got more folks interested in following than I expected and I’ve been excited all week to start sharing. Along with the emails that were shot over there were some questions attached too.
“Are you living in Denver or Houston?”
“How’s your family?”
“Where are you working again?”
“Who is that boy in your photos?”
I figured a general catch up might be needed.
Yes, I am living in Houston and have been here since 2017 after moving back from Denver post 2016 elections. I traveled there a lot in the last year which might be where the confusion came from. I loved Colorado and really intended to move there around that time in 2016 but circumstances guided me back to Texas. Today, I’m really thankful for that path.
My family is doing great and also happily in Houston. My parents and three younger brothers are still in the Northwest region of Houston, Spring. My dad is a retail regional manager, my mom a teacher, my brother Jacob works with industrial equipment, Joshua is a manager at a local comic book/game store, and Lucas recently got a job at a vape retailer, which started about 2 days before Houston went into “stay in place” orders. Right now, during COVID, they are are safely quarantining. Jacob is the only person whose work is deemed “essential” and is on site everyday. My mom is doing her best to virtually teach and engage with her students. She’s reading to them daily on Youtube. My dad’s stores are on a temporary closer until the order for Houston is lifted. Josh and Luke are not deemed essential and are likely taking the time to play video games and hang out with their cats. Generally, spirits seem high in the Smith household during this time. They have a list of horror films they’re working through and are pressing me to watch Tiger King. My mom continuously kicks my ass on the apple watch activity because she is playing ‘Beatsaber’ on Luke’s VR. You go girl.
I haven’t seen them since February and missed them on my Birthday this year. Thanks Coronavirus.
I live in the Heights of Houston in a 700 sqft duplex that has been totally my own for the last year. It’s about 45 minutes south of my childhood home. It has lots of natural light for my houseplants, the tiniest kitchen you’ve ever seen and a single bedroom. I’ve been living alone since early 2019 after my last relationship ended.
Living alone has been wonderful in so many ways and incredibly challenging in others.
The obvious wins are the complete dictation I have over the way things go- I get to eat an entire bag of chips whenever I want to and leave the bag wherever. I’m the best DJ on the planet for myself. No one tells me to fold the blankets when I’m done using them and only I get to decide when pants are and are not necessary. Everything in my house is curated by me and I worked quickly to throw together a place I could love. I’ve gained a better scope of the things I am interested in and value. Living alone has created a place for me to be myself without worry of judgement or lack of cooperation. It’s given me space to have less fear of failure, so I try things more- cooking, writing, building. I’ll cover more of these as they’re widened by the personal time quarantine will surely create.
On the flip side, this shit has been hard. Besides being the only one to carry in groceries, the isolation has been numbing and scary at times. Like when my house was broken into in October. I was at work and luckily had friends with me when I got home to discover my bike, DSLR, and the back window to my bedroom were suddenly all missing. And, It’s been numbing on the days when I was just looking for someone to share a small thought with. Having no one around to share lighthearted laughs or profound realizations with forces you to be with yourself. In the end, that relationship building with yourself is blissful but it can produce sensations that go beyond loneliness. Fear and numbness have subsided over recent months as I’ve learned to lean into the discomfort of life and enjoy the act of “being bored”. Prior to finding joy in solitude, I went through waves of crowding my day with work just so I could be in an office with other people longer. Share some company. Work was big hideout for me when being alone was hard. I work for a startup, named MarcoFab Inc (for those asking). At a startup there’s always something to do and someone to talk to. Over the last year, I’ve had several of those nights at the office with beer, pizza, and coworkers. Sometimes maddening, but typically rewarding, my career has become an important pillar in my life. Not in the soul sucking kind of way either. It’s been challenging and exciting. I’m thankful I had it to turn to when being completely on my own wasn’t stimulating me like I needed.
The biggest act of avoidance I had towards living alone was straight up not being home. I spent most of 2019 traveling out of town and out of state for work and fun. It was so often that my Houston friends asked if I still lived here- which despite renting a house in the city, I wasn’t actually building a life here. At least that’s how I felt going through the motions. Overall, living alone made me take a hard look at what was really important to me; it confirmed that it’s relationships above most else.
I consider myself a textbook extrovert and I deal with a heavy sporadic dose of overthinking. When I made the decision to live on my own I thought, “I’m going to love this, or officially lose it”. I’ve experienced both. Both outcomes accumulated to this sizable personal growth I couldn’t have gotten any other way. I’ve fallen in love with living alone and feel really grateful for the chance to do this at least once in my life. A lot of people don’t get that chance. A lot of people don’t want it. I didn’t want to either but I deeply felt it would be good for me.
Today, I can’t imagine having gone the rest of my life without gaining the resilience and self awareness I have from this short time of seclusion. Living alone has been enlightening. Like all good things, it has its proper end date.
Through my subconscious avoidance of being home, I had the most frequent year of travel in my life and wonderful things came from it. I had my first solo trip experience, reconnected with inspiring friends, built new memories with longtime ones, and met up with a crush. Austin was my most frequent stop. A hipper, smaller, Texas city with lots of bars, outdoors activities, and people I love. Three important ladies in my life (likely to be referenced in future updates as “The Girls”) Taylor L, Taylor W, and Tori (yeah, there’s a lot of Taylors. It’s not a Texas thing. It’s a 1994 thing) share an apartment in the city and my shared key to their place gives me constant access. After college we all spent time in separate states, growing up and doing our own things. 2019 was the year that everything came full circle and The Girls moved in together. Connecting the dots from Asheville, Oregon, and Arizona to Austin, TX. During one my Austin weekenders, a man I met in 2018 during a quick visit to Colorado “happened to be in town” for work. I met David at a mutual Denver friend’s apartment party in early 2018. We bonded over our connection to Texas and how good we were at dancing the cotton eyed Joe. We became mutual Instagram followers after a brief introduction and I thought the rest was history. Last summer the glory of Instagram direct messages came to my service and brought us back into communication after chatter into both our ears insisting we should “just touch base”. I had a trip to Denver planned for a wedding in the fall and maybe we could grab a drink then. In September. So in June we decided to strike up prompt conversation. What a timeline.
To my luck, by mid July Denver David had a work trip come up.
Denver David is a self employed graphic designer.
Therefore, Denver David had a rather convenient and unusual a work trip.
Denver David is very smooth.
So, Denver David made the trip to Austin for work. Which, I will confirm he did actually do. We had a really wonderful weekend together and agreed that we would just catch up next time we were in the same place. You know, whenever one of us had to travel again for work or something. He left Saturday evening that weekend and by Monday the long phone call was the first give away that this was not going to be the once in a while hello we thought it might be. I spent the rest of the year coordinating trips from Houston to Denver and new places in between for our sync ups. We managed to see each other roughly every 2-4 weeks and by the holidays had the pleasure of spending weeks with each others’ family and friends. I’ve been in a long distance relationship for months now and although annoying at times, it’s never been difficult. Things have a way of being easy when they’re right.
David did a 6 week stint in Houston beginning of the year. By the end of it, we decided that making a base in Houston for a while made sense. We decided sometime in July 2020 or forward would be a good time to make the move. We crafted a beautiful plan that I would work remote in Denver for the month of April before the July move. He spent time in my world and I would spend time in his. His life and community in Denver was something I was awestruck by during my first visit to see him and I was so excited to have more time in it. My proposal for a month remote was approved by my job and we were mentally preparing for my month out there when the quick spread of COVID became an incoming disruption. I’d been monitoring the spread since January out of Wuhan and Italy. By February, it seemed inevitable to have an impact on daily American life. By March, it hit and our phones were flooded with notifications of cancellations and closures. Not knowing how bad this could get or how long it could last, David and I discussed a quick decision for him to make the drive from Denver to Houston to bunker down together. Sitting out an indefinite quarantine in separate states was less than ideal and after getting advice from folks we trusted, getting to the same place made the most sense.
We made the decision on a Monday night and he started the drive by Wednesday morning. We aren’t sure how this is adjusting our move-in timeline just yet. Well, because no one can really be too sure of anything right now. None of us know how this is going to look in a couple days let alone a couple of weeks. At this point, all any of us can do is take this whole thing day by day. That’s a big reason I wanted another outlet for communication with you. The quarantine has taken away the big exciting moments that get captured by standard media practices- the big trips, birthday, concerts, get togethers, group dinners- but what it’s fostering is this greater appreciation for the really small excitements and passing thoughts. I’m going through a lot of anxiety about the situation of the world right now. What is this going to be like when is passes? When will it pass? Who will I know that’s impacted? Will it be okay? I’m incredibly lucky to still have a daily gig, someone to bunker down with, and people in my life that are taking this equally as seriously. Already, just in the past 2.5 weeks of being in this mode I’ve dealt with a wide range of emotions from guilt to fear to apathy. I’ve already lost hours of sleep and read my years worth of news. It’s going to be a continuous cycle for all of us. I am trying to remind myself that all I can do, all most of us can do, is stay home. I’m doing as much of my part as I can. No amount of wanting to fix the world’s problems will actually work. I’m hoping this practice can help me get out of my head more and create some sense of “new normal”.
