Well dang, it’s been a while.
Hello? Anyone there?? I know I fell off the face of the earth for a while there and haven’t written a post in *checks notes* THREE YEARS, so I thought I’d post a lil life update. I promise I am alive and well! I’m still in Ireland and still loving it.
Actually, the fact that I’m loving it is part of the reason I haven’t posted in so long.
Let me explain with a lil life update.
My blog started as a coping mechanism
When I first started this little blog back in 2014, I was graduating LSU and totally unsure about what I was going to do with my life. It started off mostly as a place where I could post about concerts and gigs I was going to. I also started it with the intention of documenting my month-long backpacking trip around Europe that summer after graduation.
Although I didn’t end up blogging while ON the trip, reminiscing by blogging about it in detail was my way of coping with the post-travel blues. I was living in Baton Rouge, working at a job I hated. Although I was still going to concerts and music festivals, ALL I wanted to do was get back to Europe. Blogging about some of the amazing cities and sights I had visited on that trip made me feel like I was back there, not stuck in my little apartment right off of I-10. This corner of the internet was a space where I could talk about my favorite things: travel and live music.
Enter January 2015. I decided to move to Ireland (more on that here) with a Working Holiday Authorization visa (and more on that here). On April 30, I touched down in Ireland for what I thought was going to be a year.
I posted monthly updates on my expat life in Ireland, as well as other posts about my European travels. After all, I was trying to travel as much as I could, considering I thought I was only going to be in Ireland for 12 months. I had so many people following along with my travels, and I loved my little community I had made here.
Life just eventually got in the way
Well, it’s now 6 years later, and I’m STILL living in Ireland. I could not have been happier when I got a sponsored work permit back in 2015 after my WHA expired. I was finally living out my dream of living in Europe, and this time with no expiration date in sight. It was literally a dream come true!!
But basically, I was blogging less and less and just living more and more. This blog was originally born out of boredom. I was in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and dying to get out and go live in Europe. And now that I’m doing that, literally living out my dream, at some point I stopped writing and posting about it as much as it just became more of the norm.
Plus, life seriously got in the way. Adulting is hard, ya’ll. Between a full-time job, a part-time Master’s degree (this is a more recent life development, but still), having a very active social life (if I do say so myself), and even putting in the most minimal of efforts on dating apps, ya girl just doesn’t have too much time.
All of a sudden a year had passed between 2017 and 2018 where I hadn’t posted a single thing on here. I had gone from posting AT LEAST once a month to not having posted in a whole dang year. Coincidentally, this was around the same time I was stressed out trying to get my work permit renewed. So in 2018, I made a brief reappearance, swearing I’d be better about posting more regularly. But turns out that was a big fat lie; life got in the way again.
Then 2020 came. And what a JOURNEY it was.
As luck would have it, on New Year’s Day of 2020, when thinking about what I wanted to accomplish in that new year, in that new decade, getting back to blogging regularly was on that list. From February to April 2020, I had trips booked to London, Amsterdam, California, Cancun, and even a bachelorette party in Tenerife. I had more trips planned for spring of 2020 than I had EVER had in a 3-month period, and I couldn’t wait to share them with you all. So getting back to blogging was one of my new year’s resolutions. I was going to post a life update about it and all.
But BOY was past Sara sooo naive in January of 2020. How LITTLE did she know about the shitstorm that was about to hit the whole world. Nope, early 2020 Sara had no idea. Zero.
I was able to do the short trips I had planned to London and Amsterdam in February before, as we all VERY much know, the whole world shut down in mid-March. Of course, NO ONE could’ve suspected just how crazy things would get. At one point I even thought things would settling down in time for my trip to Cancun in late May 2020! I thought it would all be over by then and I’d still be able to go on my trip! But wowwwww was I wrong.
Over a year later, and things STILL aren’t totally back to normal. I’m not going to lie, the last 15 months have been hard as hell. I’ve absolutely LOVED living in Ireland. But seeing the US basically go back to normal while here in Ireland we weren’t even allowed to go further than a 5km radius from our house was hard. Lockdown here was so much stricter, and lasted so much longer, than in the US. Every time I would get on Instagram, I’d see my American friends out living their best lives. They were traveling (mostly domestically), eating out, and socialising, and I would just find myself feeling so damn BITTER.
Not being able to travel was really hard for me. Obviously, I love traveling. How easy it is to travel around Europe from here is one of the things I love most about living in Ireland. And as much as I love this beautiful island I now call home, it definitely seems extra small when you’re not allowed to leave it.
But things are looking up!
I have had to remind myself that I am living my dream. And that things are most definitely looking up. Even though the past year was pretty bleak, there has been some good to come out of lé pandimique. As I said earlier, with all the extra time I had in lockdown, I started a part-time Master’s Course. Although it’s been tough, I’m excited for the doors it’s going to open for me. I was also able to go back to the US to visit friends and family for 2 month-long trips during lockdown, something that would have never been possible if I wasn’t working remotely due to COVID.
Plus, it seems like there is hope on the horizon. Vaccines are ramping up in Ireland, retail and outdoor dining has reopened, and I even booked a flight to Gran Canaria in August; my first getaway since all this madness started.
I also applied for Irish citizenship late last year, so I’m hoping my life in Europe will become even more permanent soon enough…!
So yeah, it seems like the worst is behind us. And as more and more people get vaccinated, life will start to go back to how it was. And boy, do I plan to never take absolutely any of it for granted ever again. It’s time for me to come back with a bang, to this space and community I’ve missed very much.
So anyways, there’s my life update. For any readers of my lil digital space who are still there, hi, I’m back, and I’ve missed you!
