The washing machine died yesterday. Let’s be clear it was only a matter of time. You guessed correctly that it finally gave up in the middle of a load. What surprised and surprises me is that within the hour I had read the reviews on Choice, compared prices on google, had selected a brand and model, had price haggled and ordered the item over the phone and today, less than twenty-four hours after the demise of the machine, the old one will be carted off to wherever dead washing machines go and a new one will be installed, and I presume in operation. Before Covid it would have been a very different process! I wonder how I send the coronavirus a thank-you message.Somewhere from the deep recesses of my adolescence I remember one of those inspirational posters that was a ‘thing’ in the 70’s. This particular offering showed a person of indiscriminate gender hanging from a precipice against a vivid blue sky with the wisdom of the ages imprinted across the poster; “We see from where we stand!” Yesterday the world was viewed from the perspective of someone with a full and broken washing machine. Today, I’m back to the new normal.This new normal is that in less than a week students and teachers return to school, probably. In six days, there will be sanitiser, again; there might be masks in the classroom and a whole lot of us who were never good at maths and are at times spatially challenged will be calculating in every interaction four square metres, or two square metres or physical distancing (but never social distancing) in the classroom, the corridors, in the canteen lines and on the playground. In a literal sense, where we stand, all of us, suddenly becomes critically important. All this to a backdrop of daily updates, numbers, news about vaccine rollouts and the daily parade of Premiers and Chief Medical Officers. Be honest, pre covid how many of us could have named the State Premiers or Chief Officers around the country and the Chief Medical Officers of multiple states as well. I’ve been standing in the educational paradigm for over forty years. I look through my contact list, my social media friends, the people who have been messaging and emailing and sending texts over the last few days and a great number of them also sit in that educational paradigm. Each one is juggling his or her own issues and seeing the world from a particular perspective. Each one is juggling the deeply personal realities of aged parents, young children, school aged children, distant friends and relatives who we love and miss in a lockdown that might be a lockdown or a stay-at-home order which is somehow different. Then there are the school realities in our own communities which consume us. How does a careers advisor offer suggestions to a year twelve student in the current reality? How do teachers with year twelve classes keep them focused on looming Trial and HSC realities? What do you do in a Boarding school where decisions you make have far reaching implications beyond the confines of your particular community? How does the saint who works in a special needs school possibly manage making sense of this lived experience with young people who see the world differently even when the world is seemingly normal? What about the school community in the middle of a building program where space and rooms and basic egress are daily challenges? What about one particular primary school teacher I know who is still recovering from the little girl in her community who last year was trying to give other students the virus by licking them? (I swear anyone who works in a primary school needs a loading for the craziness they have to deal with). Meanwhile there are those who work in higher education in teacher training; passionate committed individuals who love their craft and want to pass it on who are thinking about pandemic possibilities (or limitations) and watching politicians reconstruct their futures because those who make decisions need to be doing something to distract us. In the midst of a crisis let’s talk about fast tracking teacher training or consent education or an over-crowded curriculum because no one has anything else to worry about. We, all of us, see from where we stand. We are intelligent, logical, enthusiastic and at times obsessive about what we do. We see humour in our work lives and worry about our communities and the young people in our care. We are tired. The steep learning curve of technology, of pivoting learning, of working from home or in person in the new normal, of caring for those at risk in our communities and for ourselves is wearing. We are also, like the everyone else I suspect, a little afraid. Even in this ‘lucky’ country a pandemic raises questions about commitment, mortality and an unfolding future that still cannot be imagined.I stand where I stand. I have no answers. I snapped at someone yesterday on Messenger. (Can You do that?) I said I was sure I was suffering Covid fatigue. I’m also sure I am not alone. But then there’s this as perhaps the truth for today. We wait for Kerry to tell us what the world might look like next week. From where I stand, I can’t think of a single person I know who would want to be standing where she stands.