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After 20 months of mostly working from home (due to the pandemic responses) I have become thoroughly sick of sitting at home on my computer, and thus my output on this website and my other blog (neo polytheist) has been crippled. Never before have I craved real life activities like I do nowadays. Housework has more appeal to me than typing on a computer (although even then I am plugged into the immaterium, by listening to podcasts). My longing to escape cyberspace has been bad enough that I deleted my Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and Instagram accounts, as described in my post Social Media Blitz. Meanwhile, I have watched with increasing consternation as a bizarre strain of authoritarianism creeps into Australia and culturally similar nations in a way that seemed unimaginable to me even as recently as last year – 2020 was a picnic (from my perspective) compared to 2021.
What happened in Sydney in 2021 is that everything felt essentially pretty normal (expect for working from home and the emergence of mask wearing) until the end of June. Then the delta strain managed to break through quarantine and dozens, followed by hundreds, of cases per day broke out in Sydney. The only people who were vaccinated at that point were a large chunk of retirees, people with compromised immune systems and some keen beans over 40 (the vaccine rollout was initially rolled out based on age and comorbidities). So the state government decided to lock down for two weeks over the school holidays, which I was ok with (at the time). That somehow turned into an insane four month lockdown, during which Sydneysiders had to stay within 5km of where they live at all times and could only go outside for the most fundamental of reasons, or face the risk of fines ranging between $1000 and $5000. I’d never seen so many police on the roads and streets before and given the complexity of the lockdown rules, and the way they kept being amended every fortnight or so, I was not confident of staying out of the crosshairs of the police and avoiding a fine (although I did manage to avoid being fined in the end). “Justice” in Sydney took on the flavour of the arbitrary and the trivial. I wrote a blogpost about my experience during lockdown: The Priests Are in Charge and It Feels Dystopian. I followed this up with an attempt at short fiction (not my strong suit): The Virus. Given the radical actions of government, and the harm these actions have had most especially on young people, it has been impossible to stay politically neutral. Sydney saw a massive freedom rally in November, almost as soon as it once again became legal to protest. I saw with my own eyes tens of thousands of people (which, interestingly, was very ethnically diverse) and when I went home that evening and watched the news I saw “trusted” journalists mischaracterise the protest as merely “anti-vax” (both I and the friend I attended with were double vaxxed) and downplay the numbers. I feel like I am living in an insane time. Yesterday I did my weekly food shop (which requires me, by law, to first check-in to the location via a government app) and at least a third of the fresh produce shelves were empty, due to supply chain issues caused by government policies. I have never seen so many empty shelves in a supermarket. Australian governments have become like micro-managing bosses, though they keep promising they will stop at some point. I see a glimmer of hope, but I also see a glimmer of despair.
So that was my year in 2021. I am still both Pagan and Buddhist, although I would benefit from being more devout. The ongoing pandemic restrictions have had a limiting effect on Buddhist congregations, which is a real shame. My main Pagan practice is to locate families of ravens and make offerings to them. I have thus managed to turn visits to the supermarket into an act of piety. I have some Pagan topics I would like to research and write about in 2022, but so long as spending time IRL is more pleasurable to me than sitting on my computer those goals may be difficult to attain.
Note that I do not make money from any ads you may see on this website (I assume any revenue generated goes to WordPress). Almost everything on this website has been repurposed from the blog neo polytheist of which I am also the author.