As new year dawns,what do we wish for? A good dose of sweet nothing

Sydney editor

A friend recently declared December 29 the best day of the year. It’s the middle of that wondrous period between Christmas and New Year when time stands still,the days merge,no one is weighed down by plans or responsibilities,and most of us are free to relax together under the sun.

Of course,it hasn’t quite been the same this year. Nor was it last year,come to think of it. In Sydney,we’ve spent the so-called silly season tuned to a fast action replay of COVID-19’s greatest hits – rising case numbers,changing rules,bickering factions. Just when you wanted all the drama to bugger off and take a holiday,it intensified to fever pitch.

Highs and lows:Ash Barty winning Wimbledon;NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet;former premier Gladys Berejiklian;COVID-19 testing queues;and last orders at the Marigold Restaurant in Chinatown.

Highs and lows:Ash Barty winning Wimbledon;NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet;former premier Gladys Berejiklian;COVID-19 testing queues;and last orders at the Marigold Restaurant in Chinatown.Sydney Morning Herald

Many of us skipped town to see family and friends,as we usually do at this time of year,after so many months of lockdowns and closed borders and separation. It meant lining up for hours in the heat for a test that just days later was ruled unnecessary and,indeed,a burden on the system.

For those of us who stayed,Sydney has been surreal. Just as the weather finally started to resemble summer,friends started cancelling plans,every second person seemed to be isolating and the vibe suddenly got all Lockdown 3.0. So much for the bacchanalian hot vaxxed summer.

For those on the COVID-19 front line,it has obviously been much worse. Long shifts at hospitals and testing clinics,short-staffed aged care homes,labs working around the clock and under pressure. Those of us who simply had to wait in line had it relatively easy.

Driving around town on Boxing Day searching for a shorter queue,I imagined a dystopian novel set in a permanent COVID-19 testing line. There is no life or world outside the line;once you get your test,you simply join the back of the queue again.

Queues outside the RPA in Camperdown to get tested on Boxing Day.

Queues outside the RPA in Camperdown to get tested on Boxing Day.Lyndal Lyons

The last two years have often felt a bit like that – that we no longer live for the great pursuits of knowledge and pleasure and kinship and achievement,but simply to avoid infection.

Every interaction is dominated by discussion of the virus;Omicron,the rules,the response,who is isolating,who has caught it,what was cancelled,what wasn’t – and how tired of it we all are. In that sense – the inescapable omnipresence of “COVID chat” – it really is like March 2020 again.

Except,of course,there is a growing cohort of us (myself included) who have now had COVID-19. It’s in the past. Dare we say it:it’s not our problem and we don’t want to talk about it. In 2021,we were a city divided by rules and LGAs – at the turn of the year,we’re divided by whether coronavirus is ahead of us or behind us.

Thanks to the quick spread of Omicron,the wait won’t be long. A lot of us are circling a date in January as the ideal time to do our seven-day iso stint – after New Year’s,before Australia Day,in that midsummer dead zone where there’s nothing to do except grudgingly go back to work.

Some of us are probably feeling a bit gypped about the whole notion of 2021. We got vaccinated,probably spent a lot of time working from home,cancelled functions,did those silly little elbow bumps – and now here we are,lumped with COVID-19 anyway,in the middle of our summer break.

And this time we’re on our own. It’s a good thing,to be sure – we can’t have rules and restrictions and governments telling us what to do indefinitely. But it also means we have to judge things for ourselves,and navigate the differing attitudes and risk tolerance among friends and family. It has been a sobering reminder not everyone sees the world the same way.

Sometimes it feels like nothing else happened in 2021,such is the way the pandemic tends to crowd out other events. But of course,plenty did. The NSW premier quit;so did the opposition leader. The war in Afghanistan ended. The trams broke. Christian Porter resigned. Ash Barty won Wimbledon. The Swans lost an elimination final to GWS by one point. We said we would buy nuclear submarines from the Americans and pissed off the French. The Marigold closed.

2GB’s John Stanley,who hosted the breakfast show for the past week,says his talkback callers are frustrated,fatigued and “over it”. But there’s an unquenchable optimism about 2022.

“They think it’s going to get better next year because it can’t be any worse than it was this year,” he says. “People have made personal sacrifices,even if they’re very small,to try to make 2022 better. And they won’t be very happy if those sacrifices don’t result in what they expect to happen.”

We know 2022 will be better,because in most ways it already is. The interstate border closures are gone. Lockdowns are a thing of the past. Isolation time is down to seven days. There’s not much you can’t do in Sydney today if you want to.

But we’re still nervous about 2022. We’ve learnt to be cynical about politicians’ sunny dispositions and wary of the Greek alphabet. Natural disasters of some variety are pretty much guaranteed. We know that,even if this is the beginning of the end of COVID-19,we’re about to be thrown into the maelstrom of a federal election.

So what do we expect? What do we wish for? It sounds trite but might I suggest:nothing. Or more accurately,nothingness. A hiatus on news,action,warnings and announcements. A reprieve from worry,fear,feeling or even mere thought. A long stretch of blankness – an eternal December 29,if you will – as far as the eye can see.

That would be just fine.

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Michael Koziol is Sydney Editor of The Sydney Morning Herald,based in our Sydney newsroom. He was previously deputy editor of The Sun-Herald and a federal political reporter in Canberra.

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