I, like many others, have picked up new hobbies during the COVID-19 pandemic. A few of them, such as researching my Ukrainian heritage and learning Ukrainian, have stuck. Others, such as baking biscuits from scratch every morning, have not.

I originally pursued Ukrainian to distract me from the everyday anxiety of the pandemic. I love to travel and before the fall of 2019, when I moved to New York City, I travelled often. I even visited Ukraine in 2019, going to Kyiv, L’viv, and Chernobyl.

Because tome, travel has always been a huge part of my identity. A cathartic action…

I’d be the perfect horror film character.

I would totally go and write in a desolate hotel for the winter. If I lived in 1630 New England, there’s no doubt my parents would accuse me of witchcraft, due to my hippie-dippie tendencies. And hell yeah, I would venture to a remote part of Sweden to visit a mysterious Scandinavian cult…. err, I mean community.

I could write an entire post about the fantastically scary aspects of Midsommar, but to me, it’s so much more than a horror movie. It’s a deep, ugly look at a sensitive woman’s grief. It’s about…

A few years ago, I had just left my agency job and looking for work. In the long-term, I wanted to work remotely, so I was avoiding full-time desk jobs. I reached out to various local businesses pitching myself and got a response from a local ramen shop.

So for almost six weeks during my transition to remote work, I was a ramen girl. To clarify: I never made ramen. I swept floors, took orders, bussed tables, and dabbled in some marketing and website work for them. …

A few days ago, I kicked off my little quarantine movie club. I wanted to do it just for fun and selfishly, to motivate me to write more content about film. I wrote a list of films I considered “drifty”, or relating to travel or another culture. I immediately wrote down favorites like The Ramen Girl, Midsommar, and Vicky Cristina Barcelona. As an afterthought, I added The Farewell. I hadn’t seen it and I’ve been meaning to. I decided that would be the first film.

I vowed that Thursdays would be viewing days, but this week, I didn’t make enough…

This morning, I woke up in a different world. Instead of the blasting of car horns, I heard birds singing. I panicked, frantically checking whether or not I would miss my train. Then, I remembered. I was no longer in Brooklyn. There would be no train to catch.

Like many others, the spread of COVID-19 resulted in remote work for myself and my co-workers. And rather than stick it out in NYC, my partner Kyle and I decided to flee to the house I own in Wilmington, North Carolina.

“Please come home,” my best friend and tenant, Katie, had begged…

My mother says her favorite place in the world is her backyard. I never understood that until I bought my house.

In the world?!, I remember thinking.

Better than the second floor of a certain bookstore in downtown Reykjavik?

Better than the cozy three room guesthouse I lived in after I got divorced?

Better than Wrightsville Beach in the winter?

I couldn’t imagine such a thing.

But after I moved into my house, and the excitement around the hardwood floors, French doors, and light blue kitchen cabinets subsided, I became bewitched with the backyard.

In terms of size, it’s not…

There are a lot of rules after you break up with someone.

#1. Don’t talk about it.

#2. Pretend everything is fine.

#3. Keep your grief to yourself.

I’ve broken each of those rules. And not because I have a desire to air my dirty laundry, but because writing is my outlet, and fuck, the past few weeks have been something awful.

I’ve stayed up until 2 AM drinking wine and crying.

I’ve called friends needing to talk.

I’ve listened to Madonna’s “Take A Bow,” on repeat and watched movies like The First Wives Club and Under The Tuscan Sun.

…

I wait until I get to the top of the hill.

“Excuse me,” I pant, my faded Akureyri, Iceland t-shirt dripping with sweat.

“Where’s the finish for the 5k?”

The volunteer, an older man with a thick, tangled grey beard looks at me quizzically.

“5k? Miss, this is the half-marathon,” he says, pulling out a walkie-talkie.

“Your race is over.”

He relays my dilemma over the radio, with crackled, faint voices responding in kind.

I take a step away, speechless, blankly staring over the sun-soaked fields of Hilo, Hawaii.

I had been training for this 5k since November.

***

“Don’t…