Instead, I'm exhausted. A quick, completely non-randomised survey of social media connections reveals the same.

We are all wrecked. I wish I had a fancy name for it, but COVIxhaustion will have to do. It's the way we have lived our lives for nearly two years. Constantly on the lookout for the next challenge to our already challenged lives. Wearied by having to be both alert and alarmed, always on call for the next catastrophe. Will I suddenly get a notification I've been at a venue with someone who has COVID? Is that sniffle to do with the glass of red I should not have had in the middle of the week - or something more sinister?

Here we are, just two weeks from Christmas, and I am yet to feel the way I normally feel at this time of year. Happy busy. Ticking off lists. Wrapping presents. Trying to find ways to prevent the tree from giving in to the extreme magnetism of a two-year-old. Instead, I'm getting through the last of my obligations and checking out COVID exposure sites and cases. It's the same with everyone I know. Hypervigilant, hypervexed.

Not every exhaustion is created equal. I am fortunate in that my caring responsibilities are not what they were 30 years ago. The women - mostly women - who've struggled through the pandemic doing three jobs at once are near broken. They've done their paid jobs. They've supported their children during remote schooling. They've cooked and cleaned. If we discover in 12 months that there has been a dramatic rise in separations, we should not be surprised.

Lyndall Strazdins disagrees that it's purely COVID-related. She says it is a collective exhaustion to do with multiple catastrophes: yes, COVID, but also bushfires, economic collapse, fear of the future.

"We have been through collective trauma - particularly in this region. We have a response of 'fight or flight', but we can only sustain that for a certain amount of time," says Strazdins, a professor and ARC Future Fellow at the Australian National University's Research School of Population Health.

Honestly, I feel depressed just talking to her - but that's because I'm nodding, nodding as she talks. I agree with every word. She describes Australia as being in the post-traumatic phase now.

"The country has dug deep, and there is a point where people say they are not sure how much more they can dig," she says.

I had this feeling of fear before I got vaccinated. Once I was double-vaxxed, it felt like a real burden had slid from my shoulders - vaxxed to the max, along with so many of my countrywomen and men. That should have cured all that ailed me, but it turns out that brief feeling of both mental and physical freedom disappeared the minute we saw further mutations. All the multiple stresses feel like they are at my shoulder again. Will it be possible to relax in the way I used to relax?

Jo Lane, a clinical psychologist and research fellow at ANU, tells me we all have to think about how we transition from stress to rest. You can't expect that on your first day of leave you will enter the Zen zone. She says we should go for active rest first - clean out the cupboards (to be honest, this does not feel like any kind of rest to me, but it might work for you) or listen to a podcast (the ones to which I'm addicted are all about politics, and I'm usually agitated post-podcast).

But then we have to do those things which help us stress less, what Lane calls passive rest. Disconnect and connect. Connect with nature, with people you love, go for walks and swims and rides. Avoid all the busyness of our normal lives, including interaction with social media, emails, computer screens. Disconnect from all that. All of it. Delete those apps from your phone right now.

MORE JENNA PRICE:

"And do things in moderation. Don't hit the alcohol too hard," Lane says.

I should have taken that advice some time ago. Instead I chose to have an interstate holiday. Sheer lunacy.

Will I be able to connect with nature or a moderate amount of pinot? My plan is to visit Tasmania but that means keeping an eye on borders, which so far have behaved like a bridegroom's pyjamas. Will I get a negative COVID test 72 hours before entry? What will happen to any money I've already forked out if this all goes to hell in a handbasket?

Breathe in and breathe out. Remember to breathe.

One Canberra woman, Kerrie Thornton, has two kids, a full-time job, and a house to look after. This week she got the call that one of her kids has to isolate. Again. She's done all the support of remote learning she can bear. Earlier this year, Strazdins recommended we introduce a "HomeTeacher" support payment for those of us who struggled with all this. Another brilliant idea, more or less ignored by governments of all kinds. [Yeah, NSW funded remote schooling to the tune of $250. Ha ha.]

It's been hard enough to keep all the balls in the air, Thornton says, but now in the run-up to Christmas, it seems much harder. She has a friend who has decided to keep her kids at home for the last week of school, because the prospect of picking up COVID in those last few days is terrifying.

"Every parent I speak to says they are exhausted and very worried about being put in quarantine for Christmas," she says.

I'd like never to hear the words COVID or quarantine again. Who's with me? That would really put paid to COVIxhaustion.