It's been another epic year of uncertainty and anxiety, holding and pivoting. Living through a global pandemic in the world's most locked down city has been mundane and banal. A little like Groundhog Day and a lot like not feeling bothered to do anything.

My teenaged daughter is heavily into dystopian fiction at the moment and we joke that the reality is way more boring and a lot less glamorous than it is in books. A global pandemic in novels involves a lot more running for a start while we have spent most of the year in one place - our house. As well as the action, there's a feeling of creating change or at least making some kind of an impact. Meanwhile, we are subject to curfews and 5km radiuses. To spending time in our house with each other.

Don't get me wrong - I know we are lucky to be safe and well. No small thing during these strange and uncertain times. And we are lucky to be able to work and learn at home in a large house with a small garden. 

Even with all the blessings, sometimes you get so caught up in where you are and what you're doing, that you can't take the time out that you need for self-care. Even though you are feeling so strung out and exhausted that all you want to do is stick your head under your pillow and stay there for the rest of the year. You keep on going, knowing that you're being inefficient but not being able to bring yourself to stop.

I have really missed coming here to write and reflect and what's been happening in my world.

I was too caught up in writing poetry and submitting to journals as well as creating the new Pocketry Presents podcast and putting out the fourth issue of the Pocketry Almanack to have time to sit and think. And it really had an effect on my mental health. I couldn't see where I was because I couldn't take time out look at it objectively.

The circuit breaker? Deciding that enough was enough and deciding to book a holiday to Wye River before the end of the school term. The girls had completed their piano exams and I thought, 'Why not finish early and get in before everything explodes over summer?'

I knew it was meant to be when all the logistics fell into place so effortlessly.

During a g