Last week...

The coming week is going to be a hard one for me. It's the last week of my career break and if I thought I had sad feelings when my holidays were coming to an end, it's nothing compared to my sad feelings now.

So many things I didn't get time to do. So many regrets. So many lie-ins which I'm going to sorely miss.

Come Monday 29th February I'm going to have to get out of the bed when the alarm goes and get into the shower, rather than just turning over and falling back to sleep.

Damn.

Didn't see this one coming.

On the other hand it'll be nice to go and work somewhere where I can call someone if things go wrong. If the printer breaks, for example, or the computer starts working at a speed reminiscent of snails. If I type in the address for a website and it tries to download code instead of just showing me my book page.

Self-employment means the buck stops with me and sometimes that is no fun at all.

And, of course, the main thing that I'm looking forward to is a paycheque. Give it to me baby! Actual money. That I can spend at shops.

For six months I haven't bought a single thing which I didn't absolutely need. Included in that were two overseas holidays but I think they met the criteria. New holiday clothes though, not a stitch.

I haven't bought a new leather jacket in a slightly different shade of red for six months. I haven't bought a single piece of jewellery. When I haven't felt like eating the lunch I purchased at the supermarket on the weekend I have gone without lunch.

(just kidding - I eat the one I'm not feeling like, just with a grumpy expression)

For a brief moment of time I was thinking that since I have a contract with a publisher that isn't me I might be able to postpone the inevitable. Then I divided $1500 less withholding tax by six months and came up with not a lot of money. And no guarantee that in another six months I'd have the same windfall coming.

So, back to work. Back to working with people. Made of humans. Back to looking forward to lunch and then to 3.30pm so I can leave for the day. Back to fitting the job that somehow expanded out to fill entire days into the three hours between eating tea and going to bed.

Back to fiddling with problems that cease to interest me the moment I'm out the door and wrestling with decisions that only tangentially affect me.

When I left I was an expert in many things which left my brain about the same time I woke up and didn't have to go to work for the first time. I imagine I'm spending a lot of the first couple of weeks learning a lot of things I wasn't there for, and re-learning the things I was but only have vague memories of.

Sounds like fun.