I want to live better. The Covid era gave us wondrous glimpses into how

Melbourne’s CBD has roared back to life in the past few weeks. Picture: NCA NewsWire / David Geraghty

Now this is taking a bit of getting used to. Being back in the world. The proper, people-crammed one. Not very good at it. A little rusty to be honest. A dinner party here, a more raucous social occasion there, oh they’ve all been attempted and the balance isn’t quite right yet. Moments of panic. I’ve forgotten how to talk among company, how to properly do this. Forgotten the performative aspects of socialisation.

Can’t quite get the voice happening at the correct level of engagement. Then I overcompensate by being too loud, too glary with energy. Mortifying. It’s all wrong. So I pull back and clamp down into quiet and exit, exhausted – yet am so overstimulated by normality again that I can’t sleep.

What do you wear to these things? I’ve forgotten. I speak at a corporate conference and note with panic that all the women around me are looking … glossy. Ready. Well shod and shiny. Meanwhile yours truly looks like she’s emerged from a stroll in the garden; a little twiggy shall we say. Ragged. Soon I have to catch a plane. How do you get to the airport again? How much time do you leave? How do you correctly function in that normal world, the one from so long ago?

Because I’m stepping like a newborn colt into this world of fresh, post-Covid pastures. As I hesitantly return to a busier existence I’m still, instinctively, reaching for the hand sanitiser in shops and checking the mask in the pocket just in case. Ladies and gentlemen, are we ready? Over here, not quite.

I remember this life. From long ago. The one that was all rush and fret and stress and doing a million things at once as a working mum trying to hold on to some semblance of calm at the centre of everything and feeling like I was failing at the lot. So much slippage, and Covid gave me breathing space. To sort my life. It feels like an extraordinary moment in the span of a lifetime. A lesson in distilled living, a gift.

Confession: I actually liked wearing masks out and about. Have always loved the sanctuary of anonymity, the feeling of liberty where you can stretch like a cat into a rare freedom. I loved going to the local mall in Covid times and not being interrupted on my travels because no one knew it was me; could walk unsullied by intrusion. I always have a slight fear now I am going to be buttonholed by a stray golfer, or a male gynie, or a horse racing identity; that past columns will come back to haunt me on Level B2 of the carpark.

Everyone seemed nicer, more polite, in our rarefied Covid existence. We weren’t rushed, jostly, crowded; kept our distance. Were less explosively reactive in supermarkets and on the roads. I loved the plane-less sky; into the silence, the great sky silence, leaked calm. I’ve always enjoyed the firm hello of a handshake but won’t be missing that one; it feels impossibly germy right now.

The invitations are crowding in. Am I ready? Deep breath. Have to be. And when I do venture out there’s the shock of the old. Oh, so that’s how much a drink costs. Right. I’d forgotten. And look, that cafe is obscenely crowded, and how dare this bar be so crammed. I come home buzzing like I’ve been at Luna Park as my body recalibrates to the more public life.

Stop the new world, I want to get off. Not quite ready for it yet. Some Covid lessons to hold on to: Avoid overscheduling. Embrace the power of no. Retain something of that quieter groove we all settled into. Live more simply. “I would rather live on flowers / and a diet of grace,” Sydney poet Vicki Viidikas wrote once and this has become the new mantra. Because I want to live better. The Covid era gave us wondrous glimpses into how.