16: Lockdown life in My own struggles

So into 2020 we go. Will try and keep 2020 brief because of the corona virus pandemic. The year starts out actually potentially on the brink of potentially starting a relationship as I’d been on 2 previous dates before with this one date and had a bit of a connection brewing. Sadly by the third date, it kinda fizzled out. Bit more like an anti climax really where you come away from a date a bit confused if it went remotely half well or even if they are still interested in you. Eventually this particular effort fizzled out.

Dates and messages came and went. One after the other. Nothing memorable came about where I thought I’d really want to be with someone long term. Then by March, lockdown was enforced killing off any chance of meeting someone decently. I stayed on online dating during the majority of the pandemic until April 2021 where I eventually came of it. In short, I didn’t find anyone that gave me a feeling of wanting to be with someone, apart from one date in October 2020 where mistakenly I brought someone back to my flat and things got intimate before days later she decided she no longer wanted to see me (turns out she was still married to her husband I later found out). I decided that in opposite of what I was feeling post Japan holiday that it was better to meet someone organically.

The pandemic had a huge effect on my social life with friends too. With the lockdowns and social distancing being a thing during 2020, I barely saw them meaning it was similar to a time where I had moved up to Nantwich - the feeling of loneliness and not being able to do things how you wanted. Same case with seeing my family too. I’m quite distant with my family at the best of the times and the lockdowns only cemented that. Where this truly came into effect being distant was not being able to see both my grandma’s. The risk of potentially carrying or passing on a disease was too high so sadly it wasn’t right that we could see each other. Sadly both of them had passed away during the pandemic, first one being from my mums side in October 2020 who was in a care home and then in January 2021 from my dad’s side after surviving an operation. Ironically the last time I last saw them both was on the same day during Christmas 2019, not knowing or even remotely thinking that day that I would be seeing them for the final time.

The pandemic killed off any hope of travelling abroad too. I had a trip to Taiwan planned with my meetup friends to attend a wedding ceremony which I felt would have been a similar experience to what I had in Japan and also I had booked a 2.5 week holiday safari to Kenya and Uganda. The latter I can still experience which I’m aiming to do next year. Somehow I did manage to squeeze in 2 holidays during 2020 going to New Forest and Lake District a week each. Certainly better than nothing as I managed get away as far away from my job as much as possible. The realisation I had with my work was that I definitely wanted to find a new role which is something I’m going to prioritise more so next year. I felt that the responsibilities I had in my current job now are not enjoyable and I simply want to get away from the politics/bullshit and get back to doing engineering work.