The year 2021 passed under the sign of the coronavirus pandemic, just like the one before it. The restrictions and quarantine measures are starting to feel normal in a way, but also to chafe and bother me. My brain is growing dull from lack of stimuli. I’ve never had such low energy and activity levels as I did this year. Last year I cared about infection and mortality rates; now I maybe look at some high-level curves occasionally. (Current situation: cases close to reaching last winter’s peak levels, death rates low and flat, largely due to a high number of vaccinations.)

This year we have vaccines, at least, of several brands and several types. They were made available gradually, starting with the elderly and other at-risk parts of the population and then gradually to younger age groups. I got my first dose in June and the second in August. Currently the age cut-off is at 12 years so even Ingrid got her first dose in autumn.

Covid tests are also widely available, both rapid at-home tests for verifying you are not infected despite having no symptoms, and lab tests for verifying infection in case you do have symptoms.

None of us in the family have had covid-19 as far as we know.

I’ve been working from home all year. Restrictions on contact and movement were lighter in October and November, so I spent one to two days in the offices (either at Urb-it or at tretton37) but then it was back to full time work-from-home again.

I find it hard to remain focused in all the online meetings so I knit to help keep my brain busy during the slower parts. I’ve knit a total of eleven pairs of socks this year, nine for myself and two for others.

In other work-related events, I moved on to a new customer assignment in the beginning of the year, at Urb-it, a sustainable urban logistics company. It took half a year before I even met my colleagues IRL.

Both Urb-it and tretton37 managed to have Christmas parties at least, which is more than we got last year, and tretton37 even squeezed in a conference before the restrictions were tightened again.

Nearly no travelling this year, just like last year. We went for a three-day hike in Tiveden, and I hiked the first few sections of Kuststigen. Missed our annual ski trip, and our annual Estonia trip, as well as my annual ski tour.

You can tell that a year is eventless when I can remember every single time we went to the cinema, and count these on the fingers of a single hand. The latest James Bond movie, Dune, and the latest Matrix movie. There wasn’t much more of other culture either – during the more relaxed months of autumn, we saw the musical Forever Piaf, and two dance performances (one, two).

Schools for Ingrid’s and Adrian’s age groups mostly worked as normal, with classroom instruction rather than distance learning, so they both had normal years. There are very strict rules in place about any respiratory symptoms, though, so they both need to stay at home for the smallest cough or sniffle. Both were at home for over a week in December, and at some point just over a third of their classmates were actually in school. Many missed school hours there.

In other news: at the end of the year, a week before Christmas, we got a cat. Swedish has a new word, coronahund, meaning “a dog people get due to staying at home because of covid restrictions”. I guess Nysse is a covid cat in a way. I made friends with a Morris, a neighbourhood cat, during all my days at home. I started wishing that he were around more, and the kids, especially Ingrid, have been asking for a pet for a long time already. So after a few months I decided it would make sense to have a cat of our own. According to one source, 30% of the owners of “corona dogs” have no plan what to do with the dog when the pandemic ends. I intend to keep working from home and it is very unlikely that I would ever go back to working full time in an office, so Nysse is not among them. (Plus he’s a cat, not a dog.)