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Ode to a Snap Lockdown WORDS BY Ruby Ellam @ruby.ellam ART BY Stephanie Wong @bymeloniberry
Lockdowns suck. They fucking suck! As the sixth Victorian isolation orders are extended, I find it harder and harder to fulfil the brief of this article — contemplating the benefits of a snap-lockdown. I cast my mind back to the 10 day orders of the last six months, peppered into my (somewhat) back-to-normal life. All I can come up with is: This is hard. I really hate lockdowns. I’m trying to think of the reasons I felt a dose of relief during the third, fourth and fifth ones. I hate my job, so I guess they were a small blessing in that respect. I spend all my free time painting and writing anyway, so two weeks of government-sponsored craft time was not exactly unwanted. I like sleeping in, I like eating snacks, I like my personal space — if you had asked me preCOVID-19 if I wanted a fortnight of that, then I would’ve been thrilled. The benefit of a snap-lockdown is that it often highlights the things you love and how much you miss them, but in a short enough span that you can’t spiral too hard. Really, the best thing in the world is to treat these shorter lockdowns as voluntary holidays. Try to imagine that they’re not government mandated and instead you’ve been given two (to 10) weeks of respite and suddenly things might feel a little calmer, a little more manageable.
