COVID-19 and all the feels

One day, the story of the time I had to write my own termination of employment letter because the world experienced a pandemic will be funny. Right?

I actually thought nothing could possibly get crazier about the world after the political mess, climate crisis, droughts, bushfires, floods and cyclones that brought in the year.

What an idiot I was.

After slowly transitioning out of high school teaching in the past few years, in pursuit of my Masters of Creative Writing, I’ve been working as the manager of an aerial studio. We’ve had a rough six months as a small business. Mostly I can’t talk about it for privacy reasons, but we’ve unofficially lost one of our directors due to personal circumstances and extreme burnout, and it happened in a next-level smack in the face, traumatic kind of way. Suddenly I was scrambling to make sure the business didn’t collapse, and that our other director, our staff, and I, didn’t have complete mental breakdowns of our own. It was a real baptism by fire into responsibilities that I desperately didn’t want, with a huge pay cut that was entirely unavoidable, at our absolute busiest time of year. Meanwhile, I was having to smile and pretend, for the sake of our beautiful customers and community, that everything was totally fine.

At the time, our remaining director said to the staff, “If we can get through this, we can get through anything.”

Yesterday, as we sat on the floor of the studio, frantically drafting a letter to our clients about the enforced closure of the business until further notice, she told me she regrets saying that.

Yesterday, I spent the day firing all of my friends (and myself), and telling them that no, they couldn’t come in and train aerials that day, even though it is one of the main ways that many of them have coped with personal stress and anxiety in the past. They had to stay at home. We couldn’t hug it out this time.

Yesterday, literally day one of not going to school, the director’s six-year-old daughter said, “What is my life right now? My life is nothing. I am. So. Bored.”

I feel you, sister. (Well, maybe not the bored bit.)

Not everything is bad. We all know that a crisis can bring out the worst in people, but also absolutely the best in people. Case in point, for yesterday’s work – probably the shittiest working day of my entire life (and let’s keep in mind I was a high school teacher) – I was paid in a free coffee from a local business that is also in dire financial straits, but knew we were closing down, and in toilet paper rolls. The fact that toilet paper rolls are so precious to me right now maybe represents the ‘bringing out the worst in people’ side of a pandemic. But it’s also maybe a little bit funny.

Today, now that I’ve finished stage one of dealing with all of the complex implications that come with having to suddenly shut down your business and fire all your staff including yourself, I’ve been trying to log on to Centrelink, to lodge a claim for payment. I mean I tried last night as well, first chance I got, but the site was down.

(Side note that requires a gross misuse of brackets: I went to take a photo of one of the many ‘site error’ messages that I got, trying to line up the image to make sure no personal info was included. It was difficult because my downloads bar on the bottom of my laptop screen shows the names of each employee in my business, because it is full of their termination of employment letters that I whisked out to them yesterday so they could get on Centrelink ASAP. Cool. Cool cool cool.)

The Centrelink site is still down. I refresh each step of the process between each paragraph I write, but I’ve been refreshing it for literally three hours straight. It’s considered a real win if I get to fill in even one more detail on the lengthy form because of course waiving eligibility doesn’t come in for another month because why would it that would be so sensible. It’s also not at all anxiety inducing to see the message, over and over again,

I have 8 messages on my phone over the last 24 hours of my stupid MyGov login security codes, because 8 times I’ve been bumped all the way back to the start of the process, and successfully got past step one. This is, mind you, step one of about twenty two BILLION steps. So every time you get bumped, you have to get through about 12 login pages before you can get back to the ‘make a claim’ page, which more often than not (like, no joke, upwards of forty times) cycles through a few more pages before returning an error message and starting you from step two or three again. To give you actual statistics, I’m trying to work through the process again now, but now I can’t even get to the MyGov site. I can’t even get to step one.

This morning I sat in front of the ABC News, hanging out with my partner (who is working from home and still has a job, thank goodness, and calmly made me a delicious breakfast while I went through my usual cycle of happy tears at nice things friends said, and screaming at the TV) and Michael and Lisa, our BFFs every morning, as they reported on the lines of hundreds and hundreds of metres, snaking outside Centrelink. I didn’t need to see the report; I saw it in person yesterday while driving home from the job I no longer had. It’s not exactly conducive to social distancing, which is extremely alarming, but if one more politician tells these people not to turn up in person because they can just lodge online I’m going to throw my laptop with its fucking forever not loading Centrelink page through the television screen.

YOU CANNOT LODGE ONLINE RIGHT NOW. THE SITE IS DOWN. Stop reporting on how yesterday it was down; it is STILL down. Like, no shit – millions of people lost jobs on the SAME DAY and the government didn’t think that maybe site traffic would increase exponentially? Think of it like the coronavirus, pollies. You did not do your best to flatten the Centrelink traffic curve. So stop telling people off for lining up and go and bloody offer the poor Centrelink staff more support RIGHT NOW.

#endrantJUSTJOKING. Usually I try not to be angry in words that I’m going to publish in a public space, because anger is never the best solution. In person, in the isolated comfort of my own home though, I’m a crazy mofo. I’m angry AF. I also laugh a lot and cry a lot. I did twenty rage chin ups two days ago. I used to only be able to do 7 regular chin ups. Rage makes you strong. And sometimes it really messes with your lats (which luckily I won’t need anymore because I lost my job. Bonus!) Anyway, I’ve decided, for my own sanity, to let go of my rule about not being angry in public online spaces. Let it go, let it gooooo….

It’s okay to write angry things. It’s okay to vent. People don’t have to read these words, so if they if you know you won’t like them, I suggest looking away for a few months at least. I’ve spent the last few personal and world crises reminding myself and others ‘it’s okay to feel…’ in my head, and in journals and diaries, and in messages and in person (back in the old days) to staff members and friends who are struggling. It’s okay to have all the feels. It’s maybe definitely not healthy to only feel extreme rage and let it out on everyone around you at all times, but sometimes, in a bit of a controlled non violent way, it helps. Then you can pick yourself up and move on and be there for your loved ones again.

I guess I’m saying that as a kind of disclaimer. Sorry Nana and Grandpa, or whoever else who thinks I don’t swear (let’s be honest, it’s just my grandparents) who might be reading this, but my blogging style is going to change a little bit. It’s going to be more honest, because it’s going to be a little bit more for myself, than for the unknown masses of strangers who aren’t reading this blog anyway. The purpose of this blog is not to build a platform anymore, or to try and become an author. It’s just to let my feelings go somewhere that sometimes maybe might make other people feel validated, or have a giggle, or realise that we’re allll in this together…. (Got a musical quote for everything!)

That’s why today’s post is one of many around the overwhelming theme in my life right now, and the lives of literally everyone around the world (except some beautiful nature lovers on my social media feeds who are overjoyed at how nature is having some nice recovery time during this humans stay inside period, which genuinely is beautiful news, but also I’m a tiny bit afraid of how this message seems to be getting mixed up with anti-vaxxers and oh god this blog is about to get so much more political oh dear oh dear my personal and professional life will never be separate again I AM SPIRALLING GUYS): the fact that COVID-19 is an a-hole.

Stay tuned for many more rants on the subject, and pray to the Centrelink Gods that I get through to Centrelink in the next 48 hours, so that I don’t break my laptop and television screen all in one go, in this age of screens being one of our only connections to the outside world. Man, I hate screens. What a time.