Lockdown in Melbourne ends at 11.59pm today – Thursday, 21 October 2021. We have had 262 days of lockdown since March 2020. A world record no one wants.

Tomorrow we will reach 70% vaccinated and around the end of October we will get to 80%. In the last few days 100,000 people have been vaccinated, which is brilliant. This should be the last lockdown of this pandemic. Fingers, toes and everything else crossed.

There’s still very high numbers of virus circulating in the community, which is scary. Opening up will be amazing but it does need to be done cautiously. This approach suits me, as it’s going to take some adjustment to remember what you do when you’re allowed outside your home for any reason you want.

After two years of  isolation and lockdowns, so many of my pandemic behaviours have become normalised. Working from home is the most obvious example – I can’t even imagine going to a physical workplace anymore but the sense that the world outside is a risk is not going to be easy to let go of either.

Besides catching the virus, I’m worried that I will have a very low tolerance for noise and crowds. I never exactly thrived in places with lots of noise (I was not a fan of nightclubs for this reason) and crowds were ok as long as I could get fresh air or see an escape route. Who knows now? Maybe all the noise and the people will send me into sensory overload or maybe when I am bumped into by someone I’ll cry because how amazing is it to be around people.

It’s been rough the few years – I’ve more or less been ok mental health wise, being a home body who likes their own company has helped.  But introversion has its limits – you can only spend so much time with your own thoughts before you need external stimulation of seeing new things and the energy you get from other people. And this has been sorely lacking in recent times.

We crave novelty, it stimulates our brain, helps us learn and makes us feel nice.  In the last two years there’s been little novelty – just working, staying home, worrying about case numbers, and whether we are all going to die. The lack of novelty lately has made me feel like I’m going a bit stir-crazy being cooped up at home, doing the same walks, not seeing new things. It’s not exactly boredom – more like stagnation, and its had physical impacts, as well as this overriding feeling of just not being able to do this anymore.

For this reason, despite my anxieties about re-entering the world, I need to start going back out there.  The outside world will be different now because we are all different now. Negotiating and finding my way in this new world will take some time. Working out what matters to me – what brings me joy, is both exciting and daunting.

The pandemic isn’t over but for now lockdowns are. And that right now is everything.