It looks like I’ve gone and gotten covid-19. That’s what I get for going to the theatre and sitting cheek to jowl with a bunch of strangers, I guess.

I’m still tired, and I now also have a runny nose and an annoying ticklish, dry cough.

What really annoys me about this is the timing. I’ve managed to avoid it for two years, and now I get it just before I’m about to finally go on my long-awaited ski tour. Which I’ve missed for two seasons in a row, and been looking forward to since November.

I’ve got less than a week to get well.

Life is gray and muddy and miserable, and Russia has started an actual war. It’s horrible to even think that this can happen – in 2022, in the middle of Europe, people are being woken by air raid sirens. And while there may be condemnations and economic sanctions, there will be no real military help to Ukraine, and Putin’s bullying will get him what he wants. Again. I’m glad that Estonia managed to join NATO before Russia became strong enough again to block other countries’ ambitions to do the same.

Is this what the beginning of WW2 felt like? Horrifying, but at a distance, and with a side of helplessness?

Now I’m off to comfort myself with pancakes for dinner.

I received a notification yesterday that I could book my third covid shot, and had the great luck to find an open slot already for this morning reasonably close by. Someone must have just cancelled their booking.

For future me, here’s the covid status as of now. The omicron variant is taking over and now accounts for 90% of all sequenced cases in Sweden. It leads to less severe symptoms but spreads faster than the previous dominant variant, delta. The vaccines are much less effective against it, but a third vaccine dose probably gets the efficacy up again.

Meanwhile covid is spreading everywhere. Right now half a million Swedes per week are estimated to get infected, out of a total population of 10 million. In Stockholm, 22% of staff in the city’s schools are home sick, and 19% of pupils. The authorities have been forced to relax quarantine rules (for people who have a covid infection in their household) so that essential activities such as water and power supply, police and public transport etc do not get disrupted due to lack of staff.

Public events are limited to 500 persons and require proof of vaccination. Restaurants have to close at 23 and groups are limited to a maximum of 8 people. Travelling actually seems mostly possible right now, and I still have hope that this year I might actually get my spring ski tour.

I got my previous two doses at Kistamässan, a shiny, large convention hall. Today’s appointment was in a scruffy school gym. The school itself appeared to be closed. The post-shot waiting area at Kistamässan had carefully spaced chairs with ropes to ensure that people keep their distance, and a large clock to help people stick to their 15 minutes, and staff keeping an eye on people. Here the waiting rooms were barely signposted (the first room slightly too full because the second one was not very discoverable) and haphazardly furnished.

The clinic was short-staffed (you can guess why!) so there was a longish queue. I’m glad I had an early spot – the queue was about 30 people long when I got there (in advance of my appointed time) but had grown to twice the size when I finally got out, an hour later.

I feel like I’m going to go crazy soon if I sit locked up in this house much longer, without anything happening, without anything new to see or hear or do. So I treated myself to a trip to town for some retail therapy at a yarn shop.

Bought some crazy sock yarn. Longingly looked at some merino wool that I want to use for something but I don’t yet know what. Maybe a cardigan, after I finish the black one.

I’ve almost forgotten what it is like to be in town. When you walk from a shop to the train station and there are OTHER SHOPS in the street that may also be open and may have things you also want to buy (like cat toys! or clothes!) without first having made a plan and then searched for them online, hoping that what you get is what you thought you would get.

And restaurants! There are restaurants in town. That you can also just, like, discover. And go inside, and eat food that you haven’t eaten repeatedly before, or cooked yourself. I ate Arctic Char and a Belgian chocolate cake and had a glass of Sauternes. The whole meal felt like therapy.

All these covid recommendations are making me paranoid. Even when there is no actual crowding, I am very aware of every other body in my vicinity, and I can’t really relax. I wouldn’t have gone inside if the place hadn’t been nearly empty, but luckily it was.

Worked in the office today. And ran some errands in the city afterwards, like it’s 2020.

Being in the office actually felt normal today. Working from home feels more normal, still, but I didn’t catch myself thinking “wow, I’m here” or “I’m actually going on the train” or “gosh, look at all this city around me”.

It’s taken me two and a half months – since late September – to get to this point. Just as I got here, though, covid-related restrictions and recommendations are being tightened again. By just a tiny bit, and they’re all still expressed in weaselly language like “if possible” and “where appropriate” and “to some extent” but I guess it’s meant to be a signal of what might be coming.

The new normal includes taking a rapid covid test before going off on a company conference weekend.

Adrian and ran some errands in Bromma. Ingrid wanted us out of the house for as long as possible so she could get some time on her own, so she sent us a link to a nearby ice cream place. The ice cream place turned out to serve the most delicious gelatos. (Swedish raspberry and chocolate sorbet for me. I’ve never had chocolate sorbet before.)

Before covid, I’m sure there would have been a long and tedious queue outside the door. Now they had a ticket dispenser instead, which makes waiting a lot more relaxed. And the electronics store we visited before had the same. I’d much rather move around while waiting than stand still in one spot, covid or not.

Like with working from home, I hope that these changes persist.

Brought my brother over from Uppsala for a visit. Cooked a semi-fancy lunch, played board games with him and Adrian, and even made a rhubarb crumble. The crumble tastes much better than it looks, believe me.

With the whole covid thing, I haven’t been driving much at all outside the suburbs here. I am out of practise when it comes to driving longer distances. The two return trips to Uppsala were good practise.

This whole covid isolation thing is really starting to drag me down. Nothing fun is happening. Things that should be fun aren’t. Everything takes such an effort, and most things don’t seem to be worth making one. It’s beginning to feel quite depressing.

And then I watched Bo Burnham’s Inside and realized how much worse it could be. I could be stuck in a small inner city apartment, but I live in a spacious house with a large garden. I could be living alone, but I have family around me. I could be stuck with no human contact, but I have colleagues whom I “meet” daily. I could have had my entire career aborted, but I have a job that I can still do more or less normally.

Five months after starting this assignment, I finally met (most of) my colleagues at a team picnic. It felt so normal and somehow also very strange.

In video meetings, you only see the front of people’s upper bodies. Of course you make up a mental picture of the rest of them, but seeing them in person nevertheless came with surprises.

The big thing is that on screen you can’t see how tall people are. Some of my teammates were taller than I had thought; some not. Some just didn’t move or sit or stand the way I had expected.

But there were also small surprises that never would have been surprises in a normal year. One turned out to have a tattoo that I hadn’t seen. One had graying hair at the back of their neck.