What strange times we are living in, global pandemic, social revolution, what else does 2020 have for us? It almost feels taboo to even ask — knowing how crazy the first half of this year has been.
When I think back to New Years, my main goal was to find a way to be living in México by my 30th birthday. If I’m honest, this is what I have wanted since I left the first time in 2018 after spending five months in the motherland. As I sit here reflecting back, I realize I’ve received everything I wanted.
Earlier this year I began to wonder what it would look like to work from México, and if my job would allow it. Low and behold — a global pandemic. Not to say that the pandemic is what I wished for, but this situation did allow me to work from home. Ask and you shall receive — this is something I have lived by for so many years. Which also brings me to, be careful what you wish for because you just might get it — because I certainly didn’t ask for a pandemic that constantly has my anxiety riding on high!
With that said, when I was living in México a couple of years ago, ready to return to the U.S. I remembered I had asked for exactly this, a job where I felt wanted and appreciated, a job that was flexible and provided autonomy, a job that held the core value of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, a job that was open to remote working — and damn did I hit the lottery with mine. From the beginning of the quarantine, in March I had casually dropped the idea of me going to work from Mexico. Scratch that, the idea had actually been dropped since last year in November when I came with two of my friends/co-workers for Dia de Los Muertos. The same idea had been dropped again in December when I came for the holidays during our company’s busy season and I still managed to #WorkFromTheRancho. So when the pandemic happened, my director said she didn’t want us to have any regrets during this time, because the likelihood of having this amount of flexibility in the future might not happen again.
I thought it over for several months, with my first biggest fear catching the “rona” because I have asthma — and two, bringing the “rona” to the rancho. It wasn’t until I had a Covid scare when I was in Phoenix that I realized what I really wanted to do. (Here we go again, another death scare — why do I always wait for these to make the moves of what I really want in life?)
In the days when I was waiting for my results, I was in a place where I had two thoughts in my mind — if I have the “rona” and die, my one regret would have been not going to México to spend time with my abuelos and my rancho, but if I have the “rona” and live I would have the anti-bodies and feel better about traveling (this was before the latest news regarding antibodies). That, and a therapy session where I shared this logic, was what made me realize I just had to go, México was where my heart needed to be. It had been four months since I had seen any family, four months since I had hugged a family member. I could no longer go back to the pattern of keeping my life on hold for fear of something tragic happening, when there was also the possibility of something beautiful.
I made up my mind, and now I was just thinking of ways to continue justifying my decision and ways to prepare on how to safely execute it. It wasn’t a perfect decision, but it was one I decided I could live with. In my next posts I will share more on my journey of returning, strangely it’s been very similar to my first time around, but also different in many ways. The biggest one is — I’m still employed.
Nos Vemos, Maira