Well, what a year. One might have thought that getting married in January would mean the rest of the year would seem relatively uneventful, but Covid was already on the horizon.
Lockdown itself didn't affect us much, as I was able to work from home and otherwise we don't get out much anyway. Deciding that it was time to sell the house and move on came as a surprise, and the subsequent accommodation-related and money stresses have probably defined or at least outlined my life since. We were supposed to have foundations by this point, instead the consents have only just gone to council.
Work remains stable although I have been struggling more and more to make my targeted hours. We did take on a new programmer (after years of needing one) just after lockdown which has redistributed the load in a good way. I'm now primarily stressed only by not getting whatever my current project is out in a timely fashion and not also by the queue of waiting projects and have managed to find time to spend on future-time-saving improvements to our CMS and experimenting with better/alternate workflows.
Other things which have been chewing up my time included aforementioned property matters and looking after D who has sprained her "on" shoulder twice this year, once at the beginning of lockdown and again a few weeks ago (same shoulder, different muscle). If the inset sewing table I brought her for Xmas prevents a future occurrence it will have paid for itself in saved medical costs. The latter has also meant I have no choice but to shoulder more of the housework.
Time to myself has become more and more rare and is probably partly to blame for my current addiction to the Star Realms game on my phone. I resisted putting any games on this phone for a long time, but I also own the hard-copy version (a prize from Buckets of Dice some years back) and it provides excellent semi-mindless replayability with just enough luck involved that I don't feel bad on the occasions I lose to the AI. The free version is ad-free, but I will at some stage when I don't feel money is so tight drop the $10 to unlock the hard AI and more cards.
Related to this although I am technically on holiday I have been spending 2-5 hours in the office most days working on a project which needs to be done, but can't or won't be afforded by the (non-profit) client and will only continue to be a headache for me (and others) long term if it is not. It's nice and quiet in there with everyone else away and although progress hasn't been as fast as I would like it is still progress and I at least feel that I am achieving something and will eventually have one fewer concern weighing me down. (Also I've been able to quickly jump on the couple of live issues which have come up, so a bit of paid time on top of the annual leave burnt during shutdown.)
Contact with other people has also become more rare and in a lot of ways 2020 has seen further weakening of connections which were already on the way out. I had already been sacrificing attended SAGA for work for a couple of years and I now probably wouldn't recognise anyone on the committee. Gaming with friends has been rare and intermittent, I am enjoying being in the ongoing game Z started late this year.
Lockdown stopped KAOS parties and sheer exhaustion has stopped me/us attending many of the smaller KAOS-adjacent or friends events which I/we have been invited to or for as long as I would have liked. We always planned to start having small groups of friends over for dinner/board games at Gladson but actually organised it maybe twice, and our current flat has been decreed too small to entertain. We did make it to he New Years party which was relatively small and quiet and although I didn't interact much I did enjoy myself.
I still as frequently find myself thinking "I should reach out to [names here] and find out what is really going on in their life" on Facebook or via email/text to catch up, and either not having the energy or not knowing what to open with and not doing it :(
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Society wise
- lockdown(s) affected the country in ways which we probably won't fully understand for decades. I am more grateful than ever to be living where I am in the world, and that we had a government prepared to move fast and "risk the economy", rather than the plentiful counter-examples elsewhere in the western world.
- We had an election which returned that government in the unprecedented position to govern alone under MMP, and we are still waiting to see what they do with that. Significant structural changes to both the education and health systems are happening, it remains to be seen if the latter will be what is needed or any more than shuffling some chairs to the upper deck.
I can understand why they are moving slower on many issues than many people would like, both for long term political reasons and because it takes time to line up major structural change properly. Social welfare benefits should absolutely have been increased by more already though, there better be some damn good announcements coming.
- The same election contained referendums on assisted dying, which brought in a not perfect but also not "poor law is worse than no law" legal support for the option despite outright scaremongering and falsehoods from opposition groups, and narrowly rejected much better law for the legalisation and control of cannabis. Perhaps the next left-wing government will act on this since our current PM has a tendency to say "not on my watch" in response to even middling public opinion against significant law change (see also capital gains tax). (I maintain this is a long term strategy so she can step down and let her successor bring them back to the table).
I generally feel that as a snapshot these events indicate that we are becoming a more progressive society on several fronts, and there is hope on others. Not however on the housing market front :( Any money the government puts into the economy seems to end up there somehow, either landlords putting up rents to match benefit increases or investors taking advantage of ever lower interest rates to buy up even more properties.
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Going forward: basically I feel that I am surviving, little more. One more day, one more closer to house. Everything is an effort, often including spending time with my wife :( There is still time for something disasterous to come out of the White House or the stacked administration which it is leaving behind.
Still standing, but staggering.
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