There's no novelty to Melbourne's second lockdown.
The atmosphere in the empty big smoke is more drab and desolate than the first, and the police presence feels heavier.
The supermarket is despondent rather than panicked, with baking-flour sitting mostly untouched on the shelves. Nobody is kidding themselves about a new exercise regime.
Going on a government-mandated walk each day, there's an invisible divide between those of us who listened to the state government's encouragement for us to wear masks and those who are oblivious or ignorant.
The awful hard lockdown of the public housing towers in the city's inner-north showed the state that perhaps Ben Lee-soundtracked adverts were wrong: we are not all in this together. I'm more exhausted than I am afraid.
I moved to Melbourne three years ago in the cultural Canberra-Melbourne pipeline ambitious territory teenagers often go through.
I left on the tantalising promise of its live music scene, greater work opportunities as a budding journalist and the idea that I'd eat off wooden boards for the rest of my life.
Each day is unified by the nauseous anticipation of a Daniel Andrews press conference.
Now, staring down the void of a second six-week coronavirus lockdown while my Canberra friends enjoy public pints, it feels a little pointless.
I am alone in my two-room apartment, as my girlfriend is enjoying her relative freedoms in Canberra after getting into the territory a matter of hours before our suburb of North Melbourne was declared a coronavirus hotspot.
Many of my friends had just returned back to Victoria after an unemployed stint at their parent's homes in the territory with the complacent anticipation of normalcy; they're not exactly chuffed to be back now.
Instead of setting the ludicrous expectation that I'm going to learn something from self-confinement, I'm letting my hair go long and the facial hair grow out.
My only resolution thus far has been to watch a lengthy movie I'd put off watching for a while each day, and it's hard to say it's been too gruelling.
I'm chatting with my friends online with the same kind of fervour I had as a 12-year old on MSN; everybody has silently agreed that video calls cause more poorly-synced pain than joy.
Each day is unified by the nauseous anticipation of a Daniel Andrews press conference in his disappointed dad voice.
On the plus side, the lockdown makes your interim non-lockdown memories that much more vivid.
I remember all four dinner parties, three socially distanced-walks, the one cinema-screened movie (The Assistant), and three pub meals with the kind of rose-tinted nostalgia usually reserved for your first overseas trip.
Talking to my family who still live in Canberra is a reminder that "real life" really is on the other side. It's easier hearing it from them than it is to see the Instagram highlight reels from people your own age.
After being through it once before, all I'm really missing is my friends, family and girlfriend - the pandemic might just prove that living somewhere nice is more important than somewhere that's happening.
