I’ve been off now for eleven days. Each day brings a new challenge, a new chore and thoughts of getting back into what I love to do: writing, blogging and publishing.

It feels like I’ve been away for ever; that I’ve lived in a different body in another world. I had not written one word of fiction since the end of March. This is so unlike me.

But it was necessary to complete the commitment I had made to an employer so many months ago. Although I loved my job, by the middle of summer, it had exhausted me. That’s what seasonal jobs do; you work long hours almost every day because everyone knows it doesn’t last forever.

And then it’s over, and you wonder where summer went, how the stacks of paper and mail grew so tall, and how a semi-organised household became cluttered and messy. For eleven days, I’ve been working at turning mountains of shoved aside work into mole hills. I’m not nearly done, but I can see tidy corners.

With the waking to snow on the ground this morning, I feel winter will have us in its grasps sooner than I had anticipated. This means only that I must work steady, preparing the outside (outbuildings, walkways, garden and animals) for its arrival instead of putting words to paper and editing my next project.

Colder days approach though and outside work will be halted until March. During the long days of winter, I can once again return to Diane the writer.