Washington, DC
My partner, Chris, and I lived in Washington, DC from spring 2019 to spring 2020. We knew we would be moving there for a short time as Chris was taking a contract position, but we loved DC so much that we planned on staying for another six months minimum past his contract expiring. Little did we know what 2020 would bring, and in a span of just two weeks DC enforced lock-downs, Chris's contract expired, and I was laid off from the part time job I loved. We considered staying and powering through, but after a month, our lease also expired and all of the things we came to DC for and wanted to stay for were no longer happening. So now we're in a 7th floor apartment with a border collie, no family nearby, cannot see the friends we made, no museums to visit, restaurants to try, or concerts to attend, me lacking work, and Chris rolling into a remote position he could do anywhere, and knowing that the pandemic would long outlast our will to stay in those conditions, we decided it was best to come back to Tennessee. So, we had friends tour Nashville rentals for us and picked our home from afar. While we believe it was the right move considering the circumstances, we were really happy living in DC and very sad to leave. At the same time, we're very happy about being in Nashville because Ollie has a yard and our family and long time friends are all near...plus rent is cheaper. But one day we might return. Leaving DC in the circumstances we did felt so messy and like our time there was just severed. I started detailing our lives during the harshest lockdown, which was the last two months that we lived there. These photos are so incredibly important to me and I know will gain so much value and interest as time passes and I'd like to share them here. For some insight, we lived in an apartment in Columbia Heights and for the first month the only time we left the apartment was to walk Ollie. So many of these images are from long walks around our neighborhood. And of course, lots of quarantine activities like hand sewing out first masks out of an old t-shirt and elastic cut from some pajama shorts and baking pies. In our last week before we moved we had our first socially distanced meet-ups with friends, masked and overcompensating by sitting 15 feet away, having to say goodbyes without hugs.