One of the few boons of spending most of 2021 under a Covid-shaped rock was that by Christmas, my annual leave balance was thriving.

With travel off the cards and lockdowns frequent, I hadn’t really taken a holiday in a year, and after WFH with two small children underfoot for far too long, I needed one.

Unfortunately with Omicron running rampant in Sydney, travel was still mostly out of the question, but at least I could look forward to almost a month of taking my foot off the pedal and cruising for a while.

The plan was simple: catch up on some sleep, read some books, binge a TV show or three, and dabble in some wholesome family activities like visiting the zoo and the beach. No alarms, no deadlines, no emails.

It may sound boring, but as a certified introvert who fills her cup with downtime and solitude, it was exactly the tonic I needed. I read How We Love, watched season one of Morning Wars, and slowly packed up our house in preparation for moving next week.

And switch off I did: so much so that I accidentally made plans with friends for my first day back at work, before realising with a start that – ah – I have a job! Remember that? After all that unplugging, I expected to be starting the new year feeling refreshed, energised, renewed. So imagine my surprise when instead I found myself feeling familiarly fatigued, run-down, and under pressure. By day three my neck had seized up so much that I was moving like a robot, turning my entire torso every time I needed to look sideways.

Before any budding psychoanalysts suggest the obvious, I don’t hate my job. In fact, writing is my dream pastime. And with the daily commute a distant memory, I don’t even have return-to-office travel time to blame. So why the fatigue?

As with just about any negative factor of the past two years, I’m blaming Covid. “Pandemic fatigue is real and it's absolutely understandable many Australians are experiencing it”, the government’s National Mental Health Commission reports. Many of us “envisaged 2021 as being a fresh start. We found the courage to support ourselves, our loved ones and our communities through many hardships [in 2020] but it’s a bit different this time as many of us are running close to empty emotionally and mentally.”

It seems indulgent to talk about pandemic fatigue when I’m not a healthcare or frontline worker, and have had the luxury of being able to WFH for two years without being made redundant. But the reality of having no support, of juggling the pressure cooker situation of keeping two kids entertained while both their parents stare at screens all day, of trying to keep up with the demands of life as though all our scaffolding hasn’t completely dissolved…it’s a lot. And three weeks of rest can’t erase two years of intensity.

So while I’ve had a much needed breather, I’m recalibrating my expectations. 2022 isn’t a fresh start. The effects of the last two years are long term, and it’s going to take time for them to fade – especially given we’re still very much in the thick of it.

Instead, I’m treating my recent break as the moment on the bench that I needed, to get back up and finish this race.

Let’s just hope against hope that this is the home stretch.