Exhausting, back breaking, repetitive and mind numbing – that's how I'd describe my days now.
But we're all in this together, now that the world is teetering on collapse.
It's not the way I thought I'd be spending the year I turn 50.
My skinny teenagers, Scott and Adam are changing before my eyes. They're getting wiry and strong. They're losing their vacant "I'm just a kid" look and they're stepping up to fill adult shoes.
We're trying not to panic around them, but it's been a year of unprecedented change.
I remember hearing about a theory of utopia before the clouds came.
A big part of the theory was that in a new world, the value of people's jobs would be completely changed.
It's like the game of pick up sticks.
You grab a bundle of sticks, throw them into the air, and then carefully arrange them into a new construction.
So in this utopia, it would be people in useful careers such as nurses, child care workers, garbage collectors, farmers, police and firies who would be the most valued.
And this is what has happened.
Who knew that so many people went to offices they didn't want to be in, to work in jobs that they'd happily leave, doing work that they didn't want to do.
The utopia study said that almost half of people in countries such as Australia were working in jobs just like that.
I certainly was.
Really, how soul destroying to work in a job just to pay the bills. And feel that you're going to be doing that for decades until you retire.
My job at the end was writing media releases and speeches which were going to be changed in the Minister's office. And writing these epistles about climate change for a Minister who did not believe in climate change.
It was just like working in one of those gut-wrenching TV spoofs about the public service – too close to the bone to be comedy.
So many jobs have disappeared this year.
It's been a wrench for many of us to realise that our jobs were of little or no value.
That our days of dressing up for the office, toeing the line and going to "important" meetings are over.
But it's a wakeup call if we're honest with ourselves.
It's war. And we've been reassigned into the new essential services.
YOU ARE READING
How we lost the world
Science FictionThis is a dystopian tale where we find out what was really important all along. What would turn your world upside down - where desk jobs were no longer an option, where all your community's sporting fields and open spaces were turned into market gar...
