Today, when I got out of bed, I was a different person to the one that I have been for the last 18 months. For the first time since January 2011, I was completely and utterly unemployed. For the first time in a long time, I had something that I wanted to do, and by god, I was going to do it.

And for the first time in a long time, I pulled out a typewriter and began to bash out something that felt right.

The last few months haven’t been good for me. (You may have noticed.) I’ve had a ridiculous cocktail of chemicals swirling around my brain, giving me seizures and mood swings, sending me off on ill advised lustful adventures and significant alcoholic benders. I have quite simply been on a trip down the road to drunkenness, sadness, anger, stress, fat, pain and poor health aka Ruintown.

Four weeks ago, I decided to act on my long ignored instincts (and the advice of friends and family) and started taking steps to get myself out of the rut I had backed myself into. I quit my job (finished on Friday) and stopped making plans. I didn’t, and still don’t know what’s going to happen with my life from here on in. And that’s really freaking okay.

Now I’m back at home with my family, where I will be spending an unknown amount of time, writing all kinds of things and not getting paid. My mum is calling it my ‘sabbatical’. I’m just calling it ‘that time when a plan (or a lack of one) felt totally perfect’.

Some of the pleasure of this is in the silliest of details. Yes, I wrote the first draft of this post on a typewriter, and by the stars, it is so much more enjoyable than writing on a computer. The mechanical racket it makes as I pound out each word is fucking glorious, and for the first time in ages, I feel like I am actually doing something. It makes writing a physical exercise. My constructive actions are all around me – letters popping up on the page before my eyes, underneath my fingers as I work to make every keystroke count, and in my ears, reassuring me that I truly am working. You can’t make that much noise without some kind of significant effort.

It may not be beautiful, and it may not be insightful, but this blog post is the first non-commercial thing I’ve written in months. It’s also the first thing I’ve written since I’ve been home.

And by god, it feels so good to be home.