The pandemic has done crazy things to one’s perception of time and it is so easy to dismiss all this as some sort of suspended reality, a break in the space/time continuum that will one day heal so we can all get back to our usual ways with only an occasional chuckle about wasn’t that odd? When time froze for a few years there?
But this is not a freeze, a pause. There is no interregnum here. What this is is real life, happening right now, all around us. Part of that is a pandemic, yes, but other parts go on too. We are all getting older. The seasons keep passing. It was the end of summer when all this started here, and now we are beginning another summer. In between, there’s been a whole other summer. Remember last summer? It happened, and now it’s gone forever.
And so we do things differently now, but we keep on doing things, because we must. Because this is real life and we have to live it. Jokes aside (and it is so very easy to joke, particularly in this amazingly sheltered country which has been so very, very fortunate in how little the pandemic has affected most of us) life is going on, and yes, it looks different, it has masks and social distancing and queues where there never used to be queues, and perspex dividers and so much temporary infrastructure, cones everywhere – but it’s not a dystopia. This is just real life, right now.
And it’s a mess, sure, but what is life if not messy?
Merry Christmas.
The Judd Crew 
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