Under new management

‘Congratulations – three months have passed! Time to check in and reflect on how things have been going,’ chirped the automated email. I looked over to the taskbar calendar for confirmation. Seriously? Already? I swear I only just got here.

It has been a very large three months. I spent the first month living in a highrise student residence, an experience I had mercifully skipped during my undergraduate years. It got very old very quickly, especially when the fire alarm went off three times in 24 hours (2am, 2.30am and 6pm) and lockdown meant I was confined to an apartment with a revolving door of total strangers. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. It was a place to stay, but not a place to live. Especially at my age.

I finally found a permanent place to live after weeks of furious searching, a lovely older place in a nice part of town. A bigger house than I really need, but my rental budget goes a lot further here, and I decided after years of existing in a crappy shoebox flat that I wanted to live somewhere nice. Especially if I was going to be home all day.

People around here are fancy, but friendly. Friends had promised to help me move in, but lockdown forced them to cancel. I need another pair of hands to put the bedframe together, so I’ve been sleeping on a mattress on the floor. I also don’t have anywhere for visitors to sit. Probably just as well there aren’t any.

I was warmly welcomed into my new job, a delightfully non-toxic environment where for the first time in my career I feel my role ticks all the right boxes. I have plenty to do, but also a lot more agency over how I do it. I have supportive colleagues and a library-wide culture of deep care, for each other as well as the service we provide. I don’t have time to be bored, or to muse about how I would do things differently. I’m too busy actually doing them.

Every day here is a learning experience. I’m learning a whole new library management system, which is great in some ways and frustrating in others, as well as new and better ways of sourcing, processing, loading and maintaining bibliographic records. Most importantly, I’m learning how to manage a team—and do so remotely. (It’s fucking hard.) I recently farewelled a team member after 35 years of devoted service. I’ve never met her in person.

I see another human being in the flesh once a fortnight, for a masked-and-distanced lunch in the park. She’s the only person I knew in greater Geelong before I moved here. I am thankful for her company. I wish it weren’t all I had.

Like so many others in Victoria I feel myself languishing, watching the days flick from one lockdown to the next, not daring to raise hope for when I might see my friends again—the friends I moved here to be closer to. For me the difference between lockdown and not-lockdown is one of small tradeoffs; I can pop into the office to use the photocopier, but shopkeepers harass me more often for papers proving I don’t live in Melbourne. They expect to see a driver’s licence, which I don’t have, so instead I now carry my lease agreement everywhere. It’s getting a bit tiresome.

Here I continue the reclusive life I moved interstate to escape. I’m very used to being a shut-in who doesn’t leave the house and whose friends all live elsewhere. It makes the present more tolerable in some ways, but it’s hardly the dream I had looked forward to for so long.

And yet I am the happiest I have ever been. Despite our current troubles (and those of the organisation I now work for), I have more to look forward to here. I feel more settled and ready to do good things. I am no longer routinely plagued by horrific anxiety—I really don’t miss that—and there is more sunshine and nice old houses to look at. Plus everything is cheaper here. Even therapy.

It’s good to be here.