Samantha Motion: Life hacks and lessons from day one at level 2

Thank goodness for hairdressers. Photo / George Novak

COMMENT:

"I'm a homebody, I'm loving this. I could work from home forever."

That's what I've been telling everyone who asks after me during these past eight weeks of doing nearly everything at home.

Sorry, it looks like that was all a lie, because I spent yesterday morning out and about and it was an utterly joyful experience.

Turns out, I have really missed people.

I've missed smiles from strangers in the street and the little dance to dodge someone walking the other way.

I've missed our older generation, it was nice to see so many of them out again.

I've missed handshakes. I had to stop myself automatically reaching out more than once - and I wasn't the only one.

You'd think we would all be used to social distancing by now, but the feeling out there, on the street, on the first day back in level 2 was just so positive and optimistic that even a hug would have felt appropriate, if not for social distancing.

I saw businesses supporting other businesses, people buying local, old friends reconnecting, habits re-embraced. I saw the relief of long-awaited haircuts and beauty treatments. I saw a Be Kind teatowel.

It was heart-warming, especially when it involved people having undeniably hard times.

I also learned a life hack for shopping at level 2: Keep a pen in your pocket or bag. There are a lot of contact tracing books to sign and it's a pain to sterilise before and after.

Contact tracing logs are not the only new aspect of shopping. At a make-up store in a mall, the greeter asked to check my temperature.

I'm glad she warned me because when I agreed she whipped out what looked like a mini barcode reader and pointed it at my head. It beeped and I wondered what my reading was.

Bag of potatoes, probably.

Everywhere I went, everyone was doing their best to keep the prescribed 2m distance. Some were trying harder than others, of course.

In a lot of situations, however, it's a hard task and some transgressions were unavoidable, especially when moving around.

So easy was it to slip up that, if there was another surge of cases, I predict a swift return to lockdown as distancing rules offer pretty limited protection.

But having greeted level 2 with a third day of zero new cases, it's easy to feel cautiously optimistic that another lockdown will not be our future.

Every day we get better at adapting our environments, actions and attitudes to an ever-changing new normal.

And that's the real level 2 life hack.