Here we are again. Lockdown 3.0 – five days, masks everyone, four reasons to leave your home – which is fine because there’s no where to go anyway. I’m back to wondering what time Dan’s presser is, whether he’s in business casual or family hike wear, anxiously refreshing twitter to see when the DHHS daily number of infections have dropped.

If I thought this year was going to be less of a bin fire then 2021 has already proven that we are in for tough times. There was an insurrection on the US capitol and the former President has been impeached for a second time. Perth suffered massive bushfires. The number of deaths from Coronavirus is over two million, with the US death toll close to 500,000 people.

Coronavirus variants are wreaking havoc – the current lockdown is because the UK variant got out of the hotel quarantine program. This piece explains the worries with these variants and this one how much more contagious the new strain is, which is why we find ourselves in another snap lockdown. We are fortunate that we have vaccines that are effective when the virus seems to rapidly mutating.

Before Friday’s announcement, I’d been thinking that I need to make more of an effort to go out and do things. I mean I’m happy but there are worrying signs that I’ve spent way too much time alone – like writing bad poetry, so I probably need to get out of the house soon.

But the thing about this global pandemic – you have to pivot so swiftly from I had plans, too now I’m staying at home; wear a mask in all settings, you don’t need a mask now. It’s dizzying. Who wants to make plans when it’s all so uncertain? It feels like a monumental effort with the prospect of disappointment, so it’s easier to just stay home.

Of course you have to go with whatever is changing around you but processing takes a lot of energy and space. It’s been hard to find that because the rapid nature of the changes means there is always something else you need to respond to. It’s like you have 25 tabs open and someone is pinging you on messenger – so much stimulation.

In the beforetimes, activities outside my local area were something that required planning, I couldn’t just decide on the day. As a classic introvert social interactions, noise and lots of people can be exhausting – so I needed to prepare myself for that. Living an hour outside the CBD means there are practicalities of getting there and back to factor in, which adds to the emotional energy needed to go do the thing.

After a year of staying at home, I have lost my match fitness for going out – even locally. The energy needed to do things just isn’t there, so I’m being more picky than usual. It’s not that surprising; so much has changed, how you feel and what matters to you.

The upsetting thing about this new lockdown is that I was just starting to feel like things were maybe ok. Not the old normal, but the new one created by the pandemic. By normal I mean safe – that I’m not going to spend the entire time I’m outside my house stressing about if I’ve been exposed to a deadly virus. Clearly, this lockdown means that normal isn’t here yet.

Of course, I’ll get through the next five days, though I’m not going to pretend to be cheerful about it. But for all our sakes, I hope this is the last one.