I am very tempted to make a joke about the title being about the London tier system for COVID–19 lockdown (we are now in Tier 5, out of 3, lol), but I won’t. Though I suppose I’ve already done so, albeit it being a not so funny one.

There isn’t really anything very new going on (that I want to talk about anyway!), so I’m not sure why I am writing a post. In any case, here it is, here I am.

After a brief bout of all-consuming despair leading up to the holidays — an affair that I’ve always found rather stressful anyway — I am feeling quite okay, actually. Despite the new strain. Despite the weird, incessant feeling that maybe I have COVID–19 and am unwittingly passing it along to someone who will die from it in the supermarket. Despite the fact that my flatmate is moving away in the next six weeks or so.

Maybe it’s all the reality T.V.¹ I’ve been watching.

The new year was quiet, too, which it usually is, for me. Last year, I spent it at home (as in my house here, not Manila), learning how to knit. The year before that, I actually went to party, dozens of bodies pressed against each other, trying to catch a view of the paltry amount of fireworks London allows, all of us looking out a stretch of windows, drinks in our hands and hearts full of hope or something close to it.

The first new year I spent here, I found a spot by the river with other Filipinos and after midnight, ate the amazing food someone’s visiting family prepared for the rest of us who were temporarily displaced. Parties and bodies touching and late night trains — what a concept!

Isn’t it funny how you probably also sort of flinched when you watched really old holiday movies over Christmas? Where they have parties and share drinks and hug and kiss each other?

It’s not been that long, and yet it has.

I’m actually usually pretty good with warding off homesickness. A couple of weeks towards the end of last year, it wasn’t so easy. Funny how that works. I did an interview with CNN Philippines Life on spending time away from home, along with other Filipinos outside the country, and at the time I think I’d recovered from that wound of sadness and loneliness that had emerged next to my heart. Or, maybe “recover” isn’t the right word. I’d felt it less, I guess. Still, some people said I looked sad. My mom has since reassured me that she likes me, lol.

It’s the fifth day of January, and I’m looking for places to move to. There have been a lot of hiccups, to be honest, but not quite the horror show I was expecting when I’d first tried to look for a place to live after my contract at student halls — a horrific experience for a 29-year-old living with babies — was up. It’s still a bit shit, to be honest. I don’t know. Everything is so up in the air.

I guess I just wanted to say hi. Nothing Spaces dot com is turning 12 in May. That’s insane. I think I’ve outgrown sharing everything all at once but there’s an attachment to this exercise, still. Maybe I’ll get back into it, shamelessly writing about things I think (though hopefully not) and crap I do. Maybe that’s something I’ll say again right before I leave. Who fucking knows anymore? I sure don’t.

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¹ I breezed through so much Survivor and now I’ve set my sights on whatever seasons of Below Deck I can find online. It’s not great, but I’m having fun.