Literally just cannot do anything on my MacBook

My laptop was running a touch slow so I decided to restart it, but after having done so, upon logging in I’m left with this screen. I can’t open the dock, can’t bring down the dropdown thing at the top, can’t see applications that I had open before restarting even though I clicked the “Open” option upon re-login. Just stuck on the home screen.

I seem to be able to play music (which I was playing before), I just can’t actually open/at least see any apps. I’ve already force restarted it about five times to no effect

Does it have something to do with the impending update it wants to install tonight? I had this same issue pop up a couple weeks ago after updating and I just manually restarted it once and it worked again. No idea what to do here

Also this does happen to be a somewhat urgent problem as I have stuff to work on I kinda can’t access until this issue is resolved. Would appreciate any and all help