The COVID-19 pandemic challenged Australians in ways they had not been tested before: with curfews, mask mandates, border closures, restrictions on movement and the shutdown of normality.Those severe measures might have helped keep Australians alive, but they also exacted a substantial toll in many other ways.The shock is that data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) suggests we were actually happier in 2020 than we are now."We're feeling worse about the world today than we were during the pandemic lockdowns," Terry Rawnsley, an urban economist at consulting firm KPMG Australia, said."When you look at life satisfaction on a scale of one to 10, in 2020, when we're in the middle of the pandemic, life satisfaction was 7.2 out of 10 So, if your salary goes up, but the speed of inflation is higher, your ability to use that money — your purchasing power — goes down. For most Australians, that is what has been happening.The COVID-19 pandemic was a world of individualism and screens, with people isolated behind masks and keeping their distance through video calls.It is the complete opposite of the warm and deeply analogue vibe in Melbourne store and craft workshop, That Paper Joint.Selling pens and rolls of stickers before she sets up for a collage and journalling class, co-owner Zoe Crook promotes a calm and sense of togetherness at the shop in Brunswick."For myself, life is way more satisfying than it was in the year of 2020," she said.What we can experience today is the opposite of the stark isolation of the COVID pandemic.Stretching about 19 months from March 2020, that period was marked by uncertainty about health and the future