I keep a personal journal sporadically. Last year I dropped off from ~March 2020 and picked it back up on May 28, 2020. It was the period that coronavirus was the worst it got in Sydney* (*Simpsons ref: worst it got in Sydney, so far.)
Every day I review the entry from a week ago, a month ago, and a year ago. I’m not 100% with journalling so pretty often there’s missing entries, but this one is my favourite so far. It’s from a year ago today.
I keep the journalling private to only myself. It’d be good to share somehow one day with my family/kids, but there’s already so much content that I guess it’d need a thorough review first.
It’s a point in time and only lightly edited. I remember the period very vividly and also it seems like forever ago. One day, I hope this post gets lost in a sea of hundreds of my daily posts (there’s currently 80).
Started at Thu May 28 13:20:51 UTC 2020
It’s been so long. I’m here just to try to start the habit.
In the meantime, Coronavirus hit, and Australia did really well. We as a family also did really well.
In USA, 100,000 people have died as at yesterday. 100 people here. All the countries in the world are handling it differently. My USA friends are a little bit pretty conservative so it’s interesting seeing it through their eyes (‘the people who are dying were going to die’, etc).
The kids had 2 weeks of home school and then school holidays. Then another 2 weeks of full home school, and then basically back full time. Krystal loved it. We all got a bit closer (e.g. we had lunch together every day, which was fantastic!). All the kids handled it differently though. Austin grew up very quickly having everyone around. Emmett didn’t miss real life at all. Hudson just wasn’t himself. A bit moody, a bit withdrawn. He thought he probably needed to see his friends and we thought so too.
We did a good job of isolating ourselves. I went out for a takeaway coffee most days and that was it. A few times we went out for takeaway and ate it in the car — the Kebab Van in the Mitre 10 carpark, or McDonalds in the shopping centre carpark. Restrictions are lifting slowly now. 10 people are allowed in restaurants and cafes. NRL started again tonight.
We didn’t see Rod & Bronwyn for the whole time. The family all stayed away. We finally got to have a catch up and had the nicest night. Tom and I pulled an old couch out to the fire and we chilled on it with Krystal.
Scarlett had her 4th birthday under the lockdown. Her friends from dancing decorated their cars and came for a drive down our street. It was at the absolute height of the lockdown. The neighbours all watched from their windows. The mums passed Scarlett’s presents out the windows and basically yelled out the windows in conversation. The whole thing probably lasted 15 minutes and then they were gone. It was so amazing, one of those things that won’t ever happen again.
The neighbours house caught fire last week. Krystal ran down and told me, and we ran out and helped with the efforts. I really do think we stopped the place from fully burning down, once I saw the photos. Poor buggers.. We don’t see much of them, but the more we have seen them over the xmas fires and stuff the more they seem alright.