SIX MONTHS OF COVID

We are coming up to 6 months of Covid and I thought it would be good to get my thoughts down on the whole thing! This is more for my own interest, much like most I post here, but if anyone is interested, please go ahead and read and comment.

I keep joking I've been working my entire life towards covid, and whilst it's mostly been a joke it's also kind of true. I've always been happy with my own company and in my own space. Even when I was younger and still living at home Sunday was my day. I spent it in my room, I slept in late, I lazed on my bed reading, writing, listening to the radio and music, or just day dreaming and napping. It was my recharge and on Sundays when I had plans, whilst I was happy to go, I secretly missed my quiet time. 

The last few years have been really challenging for me, healing from cancer, odd bouts of mild depression, and stress from the work restructure that resulted in my 30 year career going down the gurgler. So I have returned to this one day a week of chill and it has been a life saver for me.

 

When Covid hit, I was well ready for isolation, and it has helped me get through this long and strange period in our lives. 

I first heard about Covid before the beginning of March 2020 but March was when I could tell it might be something. I was preparing to go on holidays to Adelaide and Melbourne, but didn't feel any major concerns. I did think maybe I need to grab another bottle of hand sanitizer as mine was getting low but decided not to. I had plenty of toilet paper, as I have always bought in bulk from Who Gives A Crap and the serious TP looting had yet to occur.

Things didn't heat up until my second week away and even then, in Adelaide, it wasn't too full on. I even managed to get some TP for my sister, as it was becoming problematic in Melbourne. As that week progressed I started to stay in my apartment more, reading on the balcony and relaxing, and being aware of what was happening around me when I headed out. I opted out of a concert I had tickets to as it would mean taking a few forms of public transport to get there. That didn’t seem like a smart thing to do.

The last few days I started to get quite anxious, places were shutting down, rumours of border closures and I realised I would have to think about cutting my Melbourne trip short or maybe not go at all. I decided against going straight home from Adelaide as that would mean flying into Sydney and catching the train home. I rang Virgin to change my flight home from Melbourne. It worked best and was cheapest to fly in as planned but fly back out the next day. After many hours on hold I had that sorted, and let relieved friends and family know I was headed home.

Flying into Melbourne was surreal, it was pretty quiet and empty. I avoided the few people that were around and washed my hands a lot. It wasn't so bad. I had a late lunch at the pub in St Kilda, watched the world go by, headed to my sister's apartment and waited for her to come home. We had an evening of catch up, uber, and tele. She was commencing work from home the next day. Little did we know as I hugged her goodbye on Thursday 19 March I would be the last person she would see that she knew as of writing this over 6 months later. How she has done that I have no idea, but wow!!!

Arriving home I felt very much relieved and then had to stock up my pantry. Because I had been heading away I had let food etc dwindle, and now I needed to do a decent full shop. Forget stockpiling, I just needed to get my basics. This was easier said than done. I ended up visiting 4 different supermarkets over 2 days to complete my shop. A little bigger than usual but in all, not hoarding or stockpiling. And even then, no hand sanitizer. Luckily I had picked up some miniature bottles at the airport flying home.

Once I was fine for food, I basically started to self-isolate. This was a few weeks before this became the norm for most. I guess as soon as things escalated I could tell this was not BS, this was for real and quite scary. And I was scared, not least because of past health issues. Whilst I was not in a high-risk category, I was in a mild risk one, and didn't want to push that in any way. 

The Library closed and I extended my leave, so I ended up having one month at home. I'd like to say I made great use of this time but I mostly lazed about and watched tele and ate too much. I was quite on edge and anxious, and found concentrating difficult and my reading mojo was awful. I am someone who can always entertain themselves at home, I have plenty of hobbies and ways to spend quiet time by myself. I found this was not the case during this self-imposed lockdown. I was happy enough to be at home and felt super safe and not keen to leave the house. If I had to dash out to the supermarket or chemist I felt very nervy. But I couldn't really concentrate on doing much.

When the time came to return to work, I was super anxious but happy to be there. The libraries had been already closed a few weeks, and we had been organising home deliveries. My first day felt weird and a little bit wrong to be driving somewhere beyond the local shopping centre. I was surprised at how many people were out and about exercising and waiting for coffee etc as if nothing was going on. We were not in lockdown, but I felt we should all be in self isolation if we could.

I arrived at work and the carpark was fuller than I expected, and there were definitely more people at work than I expected. I found it all very overwhelming and when I realised I needed to head to my regular - closed - location to collect some items I was super relieved. I could take a breath, refocus, and calm down. Once I returned I found out I was placed in the corner away from everyone and my task was to ring people to offer them home delivery. This was a fabulous task, and very rewarding and uplifting. Most people - all over 70s - were so excited to talk to someone and even more so when they realised we would deliver them books. Over time I did a whole range of tasks leading to home delivery and loved it. It is always nice to help people – this is why I love my job - but especially during that time. 

Even though I felt safe and ok at work, I was always happy to be home. Some days - for no real reason - I felt more stressed than others. I would find those days more difficult to calm down. I was watching a lot of comfort shows, plenty on the Animal Channel or BBC Earth, and they helped with my chill. I found a show called Snakes in the City (a South African show), which actually made me super anxious. I do not like snakes, but watching that when I came home from work feeling anxious, changed that real anxiety to a strange anxiety of watching snakes that would never be here, and when it finished that anxiety disappeared and I realised my original covid anxiety had also. Go figure!? Whatever works I say!

In time we started to talk about reopening libraries and to be honest, I wasn't keen. It was one thing to be out and about during this time, but I wasn't working directly with the public. I was scared for this, but at least these discussions gave me time to contemplate and get used to the fact that I would need to go back to opening my library at some point.

The last week of May I headed back to my library and get it ready for reopening the following week. This involved a whole range of things from tidying and doing regular reports that hadn't been done, to removing furniture, signposting re covid, adding a perspex shield, hand sanitizer stations, dots on the floor and arrows for movement.  We could only allow a small amount of people in the building at a time, and had to take details for tracing.

Opening week was insane and stressful, but also lovely and fun. People had missed us and that was so nice. Early on that first day I realised a lot of people had not left their house before. Heading to our library was their first departure from home. This meant they didn’t understand gelling their hands, or social distancing or why we had arrows on the floor. Once we explained these things more simply, everything got less stressful.

There were people who didn’t get with the program and that was certainly frustrating. Didn’t want to gel their hands, didn’t care about distancing, didn’t want to read their library card number so I could register them in the building. Some even argued with me that Covid didn’t exist. As the weeks went by things got better. Everyone is different, and being kind and understanding was the only way to get through this.

I realised I was feeling a little weird about leaving the house, so ensured I had one adventure each weekend, even if it was just a walk, the markets, or the shops. I checked in with friends and family, they checked in with me. Phone calls became more popular again. I got back into my usual hobbies, my reading mojo returned with force.

I made sure I supported local small business, especially for meals. I did a lot of online shopping, especially of books. I baked more than usual, I mastered some new meals to cook at home. I got my rest.

My anxiety about being out during Covid is easing. But I refuse to be complacent. I worry about my sister, isolated, in Melbourne, but she is doing wonderfully. We had family events with her placed at the head of the table live via an ipad!

My bookclub took to Zoom, and we had better attendance and conversations which was interesting.

I know a lot struggled with this period. It wasn’t a walk in the park for me, but really it was just staying at home more. It was that difficult. I liked the back to basics appeal of it. I hope we can learn something from all of this. Remember that excess and greed is not important. Living life in the fast lane is exhausting. Being everything to everyone is not sustainable. I am hoping to remain a little isolated from the real world moving forward. For me, it is good for my soul.

I do think this is the new normal and it will be around for longer than we anticipate, so we may as well embrace it. We have not treated the world as kindly as we could have, in terms of the environment, animals, and similar. This is our wake up call. Let’s make the world a better place, a kinder place, a slower place.