At the end of 2020, when Melburnians thought the worst of lockdowns were behind us — LOL! — my partner and I held an end-of-days prepping session with two friends at a taqueria in Brunswick.

It started out as a casual summer catch-up, but by the time we had hit the fourth margarita, our fears of another pandemic were rising like the oceans, and we decided we would buy some land on Tasmania’s King Island and ride out the next disaster from there. We started scouring property sites and committed to pooling our joint savings for a coastal plot.

Attention turned to our friends and family – those cynics who would need convincing to come with us – and how to avoid Lord of the Flies-like skirmishes over power and resources. Who would build? Who would hunt?

My partner assured our two friends, Emily and Mark, that he could spear fish. He would keep us alive. “Yeah, but fish every day?” Mark replied. “I like fish, but I am not sure I could eat it every single day.” To which we all screamed: “But it’s Armageddon!”

Now, we laugh about that night, how we were wild-eyed from a year inside, unhinged and overstimulated by fresh company, but, in truth, we were only half joking.

We bookmarked those King Island plots with an enthusiasm that cannot solely be attributed to drink, and now as I catch up with Melbourne friends after the Lockdown to End all Lockdowns ended there is a similar air of wildness to their reinvention plans. There is the usual talk of moving house and of quitting the job they loathe, but also even more momentous stuff too, such as having a kid with a stranger or walking out on their partner of 20 years.

It’s tempting after so many years – or was it decades? – in lockdown to want to alter your life in a meaningful way. To make those epic, neon-lit, caps lock, irreversible changes that leave friends and family asking: Is she OK? Have you heard from her lately?

The urge to slip the net and open a cheese shop in Daylesford, join a polyamorous collective in northern New South Wales or throw all your money at bitcoin seems, in the light of the past two years, a perfectly sane path. We want to do something different, a bit daring. Why on earth not?

Making big decisions in the wake of trauma is not always a mistake – sometimes striking out blindly turns out to be the right move – but in many cases it is. Often we need time to pass, to let the field go fallow, before we can truly understand how we feel about life and what changes need to be made.

This is psychology 101 stuff. Calm the emotional response before leaping into the unknown, don’t make any sudden decisions in the immediate aftermath of a crisis. Our brains and bodies cannot be trusted when the amygdala is still running the show, when the fight-or-flight response is blurring the calm and considered path forward.

Britons are apparently now well aware of this, with a How We Live survey of more than 4,000 adults revealing that nine out of 10 regret the air fryers and entertainment equipment they purchased, and barely touched, in lockdown.

Which is why, having searched for “King Island land for sale” for the umpteenth time this year, I have decided to shelve all big decisions for six months, to give myself time to adjust to life outside of lockdown and save myself from a raft of rash and regrettable ventures.

Surely, part of supporting our friends and family in the coming months will involve acting as a bulwark against bad decisions. Café catch-ups in this sense may well turn into interventions. Are you sure you want to go into debt to buy a run-down dairy? You know, I can’t see you as the cheerful proprietor of a rural bed and breakfast! Don’t you need to be self-motivated to become a motivational speaker?!

This won’t be easy. Temptation in the form of novelty will muddy our thoughts. For these weaker moments, I suggest bookmarking the plight of Barnes Thomas who gave up his plans of a fine art gallery in London’s upmarket Knightsbridge for a farm, six saddleback pigs, as well as some sheep and cows in west Cornwall during the first UK lockdown. He was full of enthusiasm, but things turned sour quickly. Barnes bought a flock of peacocks that were eaten by foxes. He also annoyed the locals, who objected to his plans to build a lake among other things. He no longer keeps pigs, just the sheep and cows, and has conceded the farming life probably isn’t for him.

As he noted: “When I moved here I had so many visions of what I wanted to do but I’ve been firefighting the whole time.”

Let that be a lesson to all of us.

• Johanna Leggatt is a Melbourne based journalist and writer