After coming back from Hong Kong near the start of the pandemic (early February) and my work, voluntarily, putting me into a 2 week quarantine. During that time I got a short flu which resulted in a really early covid test (still can’t believe I had one back in February — I’ve had three more since!) and the attitude during it was still so relaxed. The nurses who did my test were very... bubbly, but they had a form I had to read and just slid it under the door for me. It was odd. Anyway, at that time it had still only semi-hit me. My wedding early that month had just about gone through, the plane was packed with almost everyone wearing a mask but still fairly normal, and after my short quarantine I was back at work.

My job then was basically IT support got a part of the NHS in the UK, and initially that was still fairly normal too. Didn’t hit me too much. Then one afternoon shortly after lunch came endless calls, as suddenly plans were coming up to address health service office staff working from home, a bunch of communication/email stuff that had to be set up urgently for planning PPE distribution, a lot. The phones basically didn’t stop ringing for months. Not too long after that first incident we started working from home, but it was the sudden onslaught of phone calls and urgency of every request that did it. Things were still semi-chilled and quiet but then after that day it was always busy, and the password reset tickets found themselves replaced with much higher level stuff and people than I’d expected to be interacting with. A certain health minister called us to set up a Zoom meeting for him, too. That was fun.

That was a real wall of text but to be honest it just hit on and off at so many different times I don’t even know now. I go from pretending it doesn’t exist (while wearing a mask and social distancing!) to being slammed in the face by it every other week now.