To think that life just hasn’t been the same ever since covid

Yep. Exactly like 1984. See also:
1999: people flocking (remember the selfish arseholes "flocking" to beaches in 2020?) to see the eclipse, and burning their eyes out, so people virtuously wore the glasses, like they did masks in 2020.
2000: the Millennium Bug.
2001: Foot and mouth, and your mobile phone is frying your brain.
2002: Weapons of mass destruction.
Etc. There's always some "threat" or other.

I feel like something cracked within me in the winter lockdowns 2020/21. The summer was hard enough, but there was the window when some things were allowed to reopen for a few months and it felt like I've used all my drive to keep pushing me and the DCs out through the summer into the autumn, and by the interminable spring of 2021 was depressed. I got to the point of dropping the DCs off at school then hitting inertia until I had to pick them up. The weather was too lousy for yet more walks.

2022 was the year of the funerals. Literally the only reason I had to dress up that year. Nothing Covid related (old age, cancer and suicide). It's kind of a moot point when MiL died because the travel/ carehome restrictions meant we hadn't been able to do a family visit since our last routine trip in Autumn 2019. We did travel over in summer 2021 but only DH could see her because of carehome restrictions. By the time the carehome restrictions ended she was dying and wouldn't have known who the much-grown DCs were anymore and it was better to leave them with their memories of who she had been. The only difference 2022 made was that she was able to have the full traditional funeral that she'd always wanted.

It was 2023 before friends really emerged from the fallout of the lockdowns and everyone is more insular since. Mainly life-stress, money and loss of habit.

We also had strings of (non-Covid) health issues to deal with causing more disruption to life. Access to routine healthcare has pretty much died off which has pushed one of the DC's on-going health conditions to acute care a few times when it's escalated.

DS was diagnosed with autism just before the lockdowns and I was still adjusting to that when all social normality was stripped away. That is exactly what you do not need, and he came out of it at the age when gaming is far more alluring than socialising with extended family that didn't want to see you for a couple of years (but too young to leave at home) and that's made it permanently hard to re-connect with extended family and friends. It also taught him that people are unnecessary in life. I'm just relieved that I don't have a school refuser after 4+2 months of him being denied access to school.

I'm 5 years older. 5 years closer to menopause etc. 5 years more jaded with life, and especially the constant catacylsmic way it's reported in the media. Everything's a fucking crisis. "Crisis" has now lost all meaning. I don't do much more than follow the gist of headlines anymore because it's too bleak.

It's not all Covid, but ripping through society and the economy for 2 years with rafts of extended and virtue signalling measures that greatly exceeded what was necessary (June 2021: no, families who've had access to vaccines can't possibly sit on a school field to host a normal sports day coz covid. Stay at home and watch the Euros with a crowd of spectators in Wembley instead). The political choices of 2020/21 greatly damaged our collective ability to cope with the rest of the shit happening in the rest of the world. It probably wasn't going to be a glorious decade and the 2010s were pretty ropey too, but there was a brewing hope by 2019 that fortune would change for the better and prolonged Covid restrictions snuffed that out.

And the weather's been shit too.
(Probably the Climate Crisis)
Sigh

This. People seem really selfish and a lot of customer service is crap. There are a lot of threads on here about how everyone does the washing, nips to the gym when they are supposed to be working from home. It's OK because "the job gets done" and "I'm not paid by the hour but for my expertise". I wonder what these people did when working in an office. I think this has affected jobs like call centre staff WFH as well. I often speak to people who sound absolutely bored stiff. Yes it can be a tedious job but people used to put in a bit of an effort to sound interested.

Like 1984? The enemy changes but we are always at war?

My friends stopped going to socialise since covid. Any kind of going out in the evening has stopped. Not my choice but my friends have never got out of that mental shift in mindset. Add on the prices increases of eating / drinking out I couldn't even drag people out for my birthday now

I can remember back at university going to socials with people with very different political views. Sometimes there was some debate after a few drinks but there was never any hard feelings. When I talk about those times I almost don't believe it happened because I couldn't imagine that now.

Record highs in persistent absentees and kids on reduced time tables / part time timetables. Record number of kids educated in alternative provisions. EBSA (emotionally based school avoidance) rates very high. Plus all the children who have been deregistered. Officially still compulsory but a much lower percentage of children actually being educated in school.
As for "going to work" - wfh was rare and unusual in Jan 2020. I remember trying to get a half day wfh to go to the Dr's, so my flexi time didn't take a massive hit. I managed it but it was a ball ache, I really had to evidence I would be productive. Now I wfh more often than not and that's replicated across many sectors (not all, obviously, I don't want a waiter to wfh!)

In the UK I feel the shift started with Brexit and pitching people with differing views as enemies.

I was reading back some Facebook comments on a post I made in 2015. Two people with very differing political views were having a calm and respectable debate from their own perspective. Fast forward a couple of years and those same people were slinging mud at each other.

I'd almost forgotten that. There was no time at all between covid restrictions and Ukraine, as if there had to be some crisis on at all times. Maybe that's the true reason the reopening was delayed by a month. I almost feel sorry for Boris in never getting to have his big moment of saying "it is with great pleasure that I announce the end of all Covid restrictions, never to return, and I admit that they did much more harm than good." (Of course, he wouldn't have said what came after the last two commas; his handlers would have quickly gagged him, and pulled him from his lectern.)

Many probably feel they have less money which doesn't help.

But on the op I'd say in some ways a social contract got hit but on the up side so many around me have more flexible working which seems to make them happier

i agree with Bringmeahigherlove
It’s completely real. And Brexit also caused this same divisive anxious feeling. I think since the Thatcher politicies of the 80s even really, end stage capitalism has commercialised into absolutely every area of our lives. That’s not good for us.
Social divisions driven by social media and very high costs to just live housed and fed and clothed, have left us with a constant background feeling of insecurity.

The big maybes of the past- nuclear war- have been replaced by absolute certainty- already impacting climate emergency. That will make security of any kind much less available. We’re all experiencing a new level of precariousness.

i think life is mainly the same and in many ways happier. For me personally, the experience of the lockdowns made me decide I would never take ‘normal life’ for granted again - meeting up with friends, going out to restaurants and cinema, travel etc.

I’m a manager at work and the only way it’s changed for the worse is the tedium of having to repeatedly lecture my team (particularly Gen Z) about why they have to come to the office 3 days a week instead of hiding in their bedrooms for the rest of their lives.

Pre-Covid = pre-Brexit. Life has changed, so yes, it feels different.

Covid is a very helpful scapegoat for the government, isn't it?

A lot of the problems we currently have that are causing people to struggle - rising costs etc - are much more to do with Brexit than Covid.

I don’t think it was just Covid. As humans when major events we tend to think of before and after, the before often becomes a rose tinted version. I think it’s been a slow societal decline since the 1990s. People are not cut out for the fast paced way of life where we have to be and do everything, only now a glossier version because of social media and the internet. Most households have to have two people working to afford to live and lots of people just seem burnt out. Coupled with the fact that living standards have not improved in the last 5-10 years, instead it’s getting harder to own an home and pay bills. It’s like a disenchantment and this naturally flows into the interactions you have with people.

I think the world we live in now constantly shows us what other people’s lives are like, or rather what we perceive them to be like.
So much showing off.
This can make people resentful and want to stay away from these show offs, or those who seem to be doing well often without appearing to work hard.
I also believe that those of us who cannot work from home have had quite enough of people after the end of the working day. I know I have. I don’t want to socialise with randomers. I only want to spend time with those people I care about.
I imagine those who wfh will have a different take. So will those who don’t work.
Looking back when I was younger I spent more social time with colleagues. I am still in touch with people I worked with in the 1990s! If I were to leave my current job, I doubt very much if I’d stay in touch with my current colleagues. I think the pandemic changed things for me.
It also made me realise that life is fickle. It can be taken away at any time so I am not going to waste it my giving any more than I have to to work or strangers.
Iv’e always been careful around others with regards to personal space. I have kept pandemic boundaries at work. My work station is not close to anyone else. I still use hand gel. I always wash my hands when I get in from being in public. If a stranger gets too close I will swing my bag towards them and put on on my back/shoulder to create distance, I’m not afraid of putting my trolley between myself and others that sort of thing. I want my space.

The UK weather for the last two years has been overwhelmingly grey with less distinction between the seasons. I think this massively plays into the national mood.

I think this is true. Also SM became incredibly negative post Brexit/pandemic. People who feel resentful or powerless found an outlet and they now complain about everything so you feel more like everything is terrible.

I severely limit news/SM/phone ins in my life. I avoid negative people. I block negative nellies on the forums I'm on.

Socially I arrange things myself, go to the cinema/events/theatre on my own if no-one else can make it. The more I surround myself with positivity/avoid negativity the happier I feel.

OP is there a chance you feel depressed? It may be an idea to see a therapist to talk it through if so.

Absolutely agree nothing feels the same as before. My mother passed away during covid so that's part of it for me my normal never came back. I've had horrendous luck since covid also. More has happened in the last five years than had done in the rest of my life combined.

I completely agree. I think covid showed us how our government could really let us down, did not have our best interest at heart and were prepared to lie blatantly.

For me this disillusionment is the worst, and politics now seems very dirty. Additionally our NHS has gone even further down the pan, our schools have few resources and overworked teachers. Also for me my work is largely at home which I don’t really like.

And another thing, it always seems to be raining now. the weather is worse!! is it global warming? I don’t know!

Life moves on, everything is different for me as I have one more child and weve3 moved house. So life would have been different after five years, Covid or not. I socialise more with my family than anyone else because we make the most of our time together, but that tends to happen with young families. But everyday life is just as busy, the kids are happy at nursery and school (prep school so insulated from the worst behaviour issues I guess), and DH is in the office 5 days a week. Financially we've done better since Covid as I bought stocks during the crash and they've risen rapidly since then.

I agree with this. I think Brexit plus social media meant that people have retreated to echo chambers on all sides and find it difficult to listen to other people's points of view which then follows through into generally more unpleasant and selfish behaviour in everyday life as everyone is that bit more on edge.

I’ll never trust the public voice again

You could hire nannies easily.

This is likely to be Brexit. Also au pairs.

With respect social norms do change. The Victorians/ Edwardians were horrified by the roaring 20's. Those same bright young things were in turn shocked by the rock n roll era and then free love. Plus ca change.