Monthly Archives: June 2023

I Missed the Movies

Posted in Movies, Pop Culture, Self Reflection, Thoughts on the Pandemic by

Going to the movies used to be my favorite activity. It is perfect for dates, friends hangs, alone. It’s always a good day for a cold dark room and an enormous screen.

Need something to do on a weekend? Movie.

Had a bad day at work? Movie.

Wanna enjoy snacks in a dark room? Movie.

Some of my fondest memories are going to see movies.

My first outing as a pre-teen was to the movies.

In college, I all went to marvel at the first Black Disney princes.

My step-dad took our whole family to see every MCU movie opening weekend.

I saw ATL in South Carolina with my aunt while I was visiting her during my spring break in high school. We are huge fans of T.I. and I wanted to be New New aka Erin (Lauren London) during that pool scene. That’s a different conversation for a different day.

One summer, I went to a matinee every Sunday. I saw Columbiana, Friends with Benefits (2xs), Horrible Bosses, Madagascar 3, and Crazy Stupid Love.

The movies was a near perfect temporary escape. Not as good as a book, mind you, but a great second because you can more easily share a movie experience with loved ones. Then The Thing happened and gathering in cold, dark, rooms with strangers become verboten. I so deeply missed the opportunity to submerge myself in a totally different world for two hours and to experience it with my humans.

A Black woman in a yellow dress and black cardigan stands in front of an advertisement for the film, "The Little Mermaid". It features Halle Bailey as the title character and Melissa McCarthy as Ursula.
I enjoyed “The Little Mermaid”. I thought Halle Bailey was perfect. The new songs were fine.

I went to see The Little Mermaid with my Best Friend and her daughter. We enjoyed it and it reminded me how much I missed the splendor of the movies during the pandemic. It was so cool to go through the whole routine of popcorn, Icees, and previews. There were so many tiny humans dressed up like the characters from the movie. It reminded me of myself when the Harry Potter movies were coming out. We still kept our distance and the theatre was not crowded at all the way I remembered from the before times, but it was nice. I missed it a lot.

Maybe I Want to Move

Posted in Self Reflection by
Image of a striped straw hat, sunglasses, an old-fashioned film camera, and a tropical drink in a tall glass sitting on top of a wooden table. A brick wall is blurred in the background. Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Since I have been in my thirties, wanderlust has hit me so hard and very unexpectantly.

Once, I was on a cruise with my best friend was telling me about how she wanted to move away and the conversation upset me so much that a person at the table next to us asked if I was ok.

No, I was not ok. Let me explain.

I have had the same friends for twenty years. I added a couple in college. But my circle is still very small. I feared that physical distance would cause me to lose my relationships; the idea of that upset me deeply.

The pandemic has made maintaining ALL relationships work. You gotta make an effort to reach the people you love. It is not likely that you will just bump into them. In my life, that has manifested a confidence that the people in my life love me for real for real. Pretty much all relationships are long distance now. we’ve lived through almost years of Zoom birthdays and holidays. Virtual everything. I feel like if we have made it so far it’s because we really wanted to.

My best friend did move, by the way, two time zones away to be in love and have a cute family or whatever.

I am incredibly privileged to work from home permanently. Basically, my life equals have laptop will travel. I’ve been aching to try something new and experience a new environment. I love Chicago so much. I could go on for paragraphs about how Chicago is the greatest city in the United States. But the facts are, Chicago is cold and snowy most of the year. It’s also the third largest city in the union. There are people everywhere, all the time. It might be nice to live somewhere more warm and less dense.

Maybe 2023 holds a move for me.

Drinking Guinness in Dublin while studying abroad in 2014.
The Bahamas for my 25th birthday.