Isolation diaries part 25: Temptation, frustration

By Andrew Johnston

Jan 12, 2021

IT WAS a calm Monday night.

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I was sitting on my couch watching random videos of Late Night with David Letterman from the mid-1980s. (I know, I'm super cool, but I'd well and truly run out of things to do at this point.)

Then the news came through, via tweet.

“Did you arrive from regional NSW excluding Greater Sydney, Wollongong and Blue Mountains areas and are currently isolating at home? You are now able to leave isolation if you have received a negative test result for #COVID19.”

Freedom.

After 10 days that had somehow felt like six months, I was right to leave the house again.

There wasn't a lot of good to come out of the quarantine.

I was at home for the entirety of a Test match that Australia managed to draw in what felt like a loss.

I had to have co-workers go to the supermarket and get me food, and had to explain to the person delivering me a pizza that they needed to leave it at the door and leave so I could open the door and get it.

My exercise was walking laps of my small unit, and that's not easy.

All this knowing I had been nowhere near a case, and had tested negative when I got back.

I know I'm having a whinge, but this was my third go in lockdown, and I'd simply hit breaking point.

Lockdown was tough, but hard quarantine is something else entirely.

Not being able to leave the home at all is not enjoyable.

The one upside for me is that I was able to work.

That gives you about eight hours every day when you can focus on work, but then you get back to staring at the walls, not sure what to do with yourself.

And I know I’m not alone in this feeling.

Everyone who has been through quarantine knows how unbelievably annoying the process is.

But, thankfully, I didn’t have to do the final four days that I was originally told I had to do.

I get to go back to football training during the week.

I walked into the Riv office on Tuesday morning and got to see people that I haven’t seen in close to four weeks, and that was great.

I missed human contact.

Now, complaining aside, the good news is things are relatively stable.

We are getting regular zeroes in community cases in Victoria, Queensland seems to have avoided the worst of things with the UK strain, and most of Sydney’s cases are coming from the same cluster.

Things feel okay.

They will continue to get better in coming weeks, we hope.

And while the virus isn’t going away for a while yet, we can be hopeful that we won’t be in this position again.

Because I don’t want to go back into quarantine.

I like fresh air, I like the sun, I like going to the river.

There are many great things outside my house.

And I’d like to enjoy them for a while now, if that’s okay.

Isolation diaries

Isolation diaries part 24: Here we go again

Isolation diaries part 23: Goodbye, farewell and amen

Isolation diaries part 22: Across the river

Isolation diaries part 21: Step out, face the sunshine