My passport arrived!
Some good news finally! I sent in my passport for renewal the first week of March and when everything shut down two weeks later I did expect delays but not how it happened.
My passport wasn’t two years old but I had to send it again and pay again to change my name on it. If your passport is under a year old then it is free. That was somewhat annoying.
Well I sent it in thinking it might take the normal eight weeks to arrive, not the four weeks of my last renewal. I lived in ignorant bliss for two months until I saw a post in a group I’m in saying passport processing offices had been shut down in March except for life or death situations. The one thing keeping my sanity and motivation in check was gone. I stopped doing yoga after work and opted for naps, I turned my camera off in video meetings, I cried often, I was angry, I was listless.
in early June the State Department announced they were opening select passport processing offices in a few days and getting to work on the backlog. The office I mailed mine to was not on the list, but it was something and cried, happy tears this time. I check the website every day to see if my office was opening.
Two weeks ago I received an email that my application was in process! The next day another email, this time my application was approved and would arrive in a few days. I fully planned to camp out at my mailbox and get drunk when it arrived. Two days later my mom anticlimactically handed me a thick government envelope.
Unfortunately, people in this country can’t get their shit together and we’re experiencing a surge in Covid cases thus while Europe begins to reopen they are not reopening to us. I get it, I’m for it, I don’t know when they’ll allow Americans but when they do I will be ready.
