I’m currently hanging out in a hotel room in Louisville, Kentucky, with Spotify in one tab and flight tracker in the other. My friend Patti is going to join me in maybe a little less than two hours. We’ve been hardcore planning this trip for weeks. Low key planning it for months.

Tomorrow we’re going to both be working from the hotel room. Saturday I’ll be running the Urban Bourbon Half Marathon. Originally, Patti was going to run it also, but her back injury just isn’t healed enough yet, so she is coming to cheer me on. We’re doing all the things. We got Patti a wristband so that she can get into all of the things that I can get into after the race. We got the VIP packet pick up, which involves hors d'oeuvres and bourbon cocktails. We got the four course dinner the night after the race, where you get to pick all of your courses in advance. (Bourbon cocktails are also included, of course.) Both of us have been more or less cash strapped for a while. It’s been really fun to just say ‘yes’ to everything because we can.

As I was merging onto the highway, singing loudly to a song streaming through my speakers, I realized that this was the first time I had taken a trip anywhere by myself since I went to a weekend Writers Conference in Lexington, Kentucky. One month before that I had gone to Bowling Green to see my parents after they had a car accident. I assured myself that they were okay, had dinner with them, and drove home. Both of those trips were in late summer of 2019.

Obviously there are reasons for this. Global reasons.

Still.

I read an article a few months ago about collective effervescence. It’s the joy that you feel, that is amplified, when you’re experiencing something alongside other people. Like a show, a sporting event, or even a race. In the article, it mentions that the introverts were the ones most surprised by how much they were affected by the lack of social interaction in 2020. We may not need it as much as extroverts do, but we are still genetically social creatures, and we do need it.

It’s true that the pandemic is still going on. And while I’ve had all three of my shots, I still wear my mask into stores. The race I’m running has limited participation, gave out gaiters rather than shirts this year, and asked us all to wear the gaiters—or some other face covering—while in the starting chute.

A screenshot from when I was tracking Patti’s flight.

My friend took a COVID test recently because someone in her office had tested positive. She’s still negative.

We’re probably going to have to wear masks out wherever we go this weekend.

I don’t care.

I get to run a race. I don’t care what anyone says, you cannot push yourself in a virtual race like you can in a live one. This will be my first half marathon since my big injury two years ago. First race since November 2019 and my first time running more than twelve miles since my most recent injury. I’m so excited to be able to do it live.

I get to see my friend! We’ve both been working really hard and we get to have a real break. She just moved across the country and we get to assure each other that yes, we can still hang out. We will still make time. And we get to sit together and talk about all the crazy shit that’s been happening in the past month in person. Yes, Zoom and FaceTime are great, but there’s nothing like being in the same room as someone.

We get to be on a trip by ourselves. In any day and age, this is a wonderful thing. I love my husband. I think one thing that’s been missing this past year is time away to do our own things. I used to love going out to dinner with him, talking about all the things we’d done during the day—or week, there were some stretches at our most busy where we only saw each other in the morning and evening—and gaining new perspectives on those experiences.

I’ve been slowly getting some of that collective effervescence back. I joined a volleyball league randomly this summer. It was outdoors and social. I was terrible but had a great time. We also somehow had a come from behind surge in the playoffs Wednesday night and were ‘on’ from 7:30 pm to 10pm. I got up at five the next morning, exhausted, for my final taper run, then taught class, worked, jumped in the car, checked into the hotel, worked, tried to nap, failed, remembered that I had to write this. I’m exhausted.

But I can’t possibly nap. I’m too excited. It’s like the night before Christmas and I’m five years old. But I can honestly track Santa flying through the air and she’s totally cool with me being awake and us going to get a cocktail when she gets here.

Not my best analogy, but I’m keeping it.

Her plane lands in six minutes and I’m done writing this.

Have a fantastic weekend, my friends.

Collective Effervescence