As we face Omicron with soul-deep weariness, that sense of uncertainty rises again | Lenore Taylor

The story of the pandemic is one of trying to understand a future we cannot plan for while still clinging to hope

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It's an effort to disentangle this year's stresses and lockdowns and abandoned plans from last year's. It is difficult to track time when many of life's markers are gone and the future is chronically uncertain. Eventually the year's story comes back into focus, defined, of course, by the pandemic's path.

This time last year Sydney's northern beaches were locked down. Then there was the brief and patchy reprieve until Delta breached our hermit nation's defences in June, and we endured the grinding lockdowns in New South Wales and Victoria through winter and spring, the hospitalisations and deaths, waiting for the government to procure sufficient vaccines for us to outpace the virus. We enjoyed another hesitant return to something closer to normal, a few reunions, some restaurant meals, a few weeks back at work, and now Omicron, and that sense of rising uncertainty all over again.