Emily | Saying Goodbye to Chicago + Hello to DC
I think something that I’ve learned during this is—slowing down and rethinking how we move about the world.
#WeareEmily part 1 | my sweet friend Emily has been in Chicago for seven years, and Chicago land her whole life. We spent hours upon hours waiting for buses in Chicago, going on coffee shop crawls, and seeing Noah Gundersen live more times than is normal. This pandemic not only taught Emily about support groups and ways to be alone— but also prompted her first cross-country move to DC. This interview was super fun, thank you for listening.
“The pandemic has been these really big life changing moments amongst complete quiet and stillness.”
Emily is Rock Creek Park Washington D.C. in October 2020
“In May my parents sold our family home...In October I interviewed for a new job, took the job which required me to move from Chicago to Washington D.C., and then in the middle of that move I got Covid—the virus, and at the end of November I actually made that move, and started the job in December.”
2017, Jack. “This is my dog who died over the summer. This photo is from my college graduation in 2017.”
“I had a really good 2019, it was a year that had a lot of changes—got to go on a lot of really cool trips and I was really looking forward to the new year—and for everyone it went off in a way we never expected. ”
“I’ve realized over this year just how important it is just to protect our relationships and protect our mental health.”
“I don’t have a natural ‘stop button’ I realize, I always have something that I am doing and filling my time with. ”
“I didn’t realize how burned out I was until I was forced to stay at home. ”
“Porch photo:this was the front porch of my apartment in Chicago. I spent a lot of the spring reading here.”
“We have had to reframe how we think about work, and also reframe what we think about rest...I tend to subscribe not doing things as unproductive and unproductive as lazy. Which is not the case, you need to rest. You need to take that time, we are made to rest and rest is a good thing. This has really made me think about that and really cherish those moments of being able to rest.”
“I have been a natural reader most of my life. So early on in the pandemic, I sped through a bunch of books, I purchased way too many books not finishing the ones I had on the shelf. That’s a classic one for me. Going on walks, that’s something I only did sort of when I was hitting a cliff... and now that’s something I do everyday. One of the big blessings of Washington is we have a National Park in D.C. and it’s very short walk from my house. So I can very easily be in this beautiful park.”
“I’ve realized I am more reliant on friends and family for re-charging then I realized....at the end of a long day one of the things I love to do is calling a friend and talking to them for 30 minutes and have a friendly and easy chat.”
“My bike! I forgot to say this because I haven’t biked in DC much, but I spent a decent amount of time biking around Chicago over the summer.
“Having those little traditions, I facetime coffee with one friend every Sunday, which is great.”
“I really wonder how we would’ve handled this had this happened even 10-15 years ago when it [technology/social media] wasn’t as built out.”
“We moved in when I was six and I was twenty-five when they moved out. And I hadn’t lived there in seven years, but it was still has so many memories...all my friends would come over after school. ”
Farm, “I grew up down the street from an onion farm. On the day we moved houses, I went over to say goodbye”
“We didn’t get to do some of those final things I think we would have loved to do: having everyone over one last time.”
“I don’t know where I got it from, there’s no main event. But it was election day...and I noticed that there was a strange feeling in my throat...I got really scared and decided to just get tested. ”
“What struck me about it was just the sheer loneliness of that experience. I was proud of myself for listening to what my body was telling me...as women we are often told that our emotions are too much, that are feeling too much and we need to must calm down, which is phrase that gets thrown at us a lot. So, I am glad I took that initiative to get tested. because if I hadn’t and I thought I was fine it could have led to a lot of other people getting ill. ”
Chicago Boat/Skyline: taken right after Emily found out she was moving to DC
“We were on one of the boat tours, getting to go out on Lake Michigan and seeing the city and realizing that this thing I couldn’t share with anyone yet! And that this place I had called home for seven years where I had grown so much and learned a lot and lost a lot and started to become an adult—that I was leaving. ”
“In one sense the pandemic made it easier to move, but harder in the other way.”
“Forever Green, this is the last in-person even I attended before everything shut down. March 2020.”
“I didn’t have a model for what a cross-country move looked like...my dad and I were the ones who drove the UHaul. We chose to do it over Thanksgiving which was a lot of fun to spend that weekend with my dad. He’d never been to D.C. and I think he was extremely thrilled that I was moving here as an excuse to come.”
“This is my dad and I on Thanksgiving day with the moving truck we drove across the country.”
“It was a reframing that we’ve all had to do in different ways this year, and this is the way that mine was. ”
Thank you Emily for sharing your story and reflections.
All photos given to me by Emily and used for purposes of oral history storytelling :)
