Surviving 2020 more or less unscathed- it certainly hasn't been my worst year personally, but that hasn't made the ride any less wild. The lockdown measures appear to have worked out okay and COVID-19 has largely been eradicated in the state of Victoria, with low numbers across the rest of the country. Society is easing back into something resembling normalcy, though admittedly I'm kind of an indoor cat and lockdown is my ideal lifestyle. The weather is warming up which means my physical health is rapidly going down the drain. Air conditioning doesn't seem to be functioning correctly at work which led to me having a nose bleed* toward the end of one of my shifts the other week. Facemasks are still mandatory in the shop though, so I figured as long as it didn't leak out nobody needed to know and I could clean up in the car after clocking out. (Apparently sick pay is less than regular rates, so it wasn't worth leaving early.) On the topic of blood, my iron levels crashed and nobody

Level 4 lockdown restrictions are tentatively starting to ease up. Personally I'm not ready to reintegrate into society in any capacity, but I was already an unwilling participant to begin with, so it's kind of a moot point.

Daniel Andrews has issued a State of Disaster complete with curfew (8pm-5am} and level 4 lockdown restrictions for Melbourne (level 3 for the rest of Victoria). Personally, I believe this is the right approach, but should have been implemented sooner. However, many people felt they were locked up for "no reason" completely missing the point that if it seems to be "no reason" that means people aren't getting sick, thus- it's working. Frustratingly my workplace is still encouraging people to leave their homes during a pandemic to milk as many unsustainable short term profits out of the next 48 hours as they possibly can because they have precisely zero (0) respect for the human lives which are at stake. Hilariously the email they sent out specifies that all stores will be open late with doors closing at 7pm, however, the normal closing hours are actually 9pm so, in fact, they are closing early on account of the 8pm curfew. But like, props to marketing for that one I guess? Whether or