For those of you who don’t know, I’m currently writing daily for GamePro. This is, of course, awesome and I’m both happy and honoured to be able to do so, even if it means having to remember how all you Americans spell things and the fact that companies are singular nouns, not plurals.

Having been out of full-time (well, pretty much any work) for the best part of a year, coming back to actually having to do stuff in the daytime is, unsurprisingly, a bit of a system shock. Not in a bad way, though. On the contrary, it’s nice to be able to get up and know that I have Things To Do. I don’t know if you (yes, you, reading this) have ever experienced unemployment, but while it sounds like the best thing ever in many ways—just not having to commute is heavenly—after a while it does get both annoying and demoralising.

Which is why returning to work—even if it’s work from home at curious, PST-friendly hours like I’m currently doing—can sometimes be a surprise. Having had entire days of nothingness to fill with any combination of sitting on the Internet, watching TV, trawling your DVD collection, playing video games or even—shock—going out—having a healthy chunk of your day taken up by Stuff You Have To Do means that you have to rethink things somewhat.

It’s a lot more difficult to find the time to go out running, for example. I could go in the mornings if I woke up a bit earlier, of course, but still operating on a slightly-skewed body clock means that doesn’t always (ever) happen. There’s the weekends too, of course—but then weekends get filled up with socialising and doing things you don’t have time to do in the week. You start to understand the expression “not enough hours in the day” all too well.

Don’t get the impression I’m complaining—I’m really enjoying the work I’m doing and I hope that shows in what I produce. I like what I do and people who read it seem to like it, too. So that’s all good. I just find it quite amusing that when you have the time to do everything you might want to do, you don’t have the means to. And when you do have the means to, you don’t have the time! Craziness.

I couldn’t tell you for sure if things are going to stay exactly this way, but it’s certainly better than the way things have been. It’s been a long, difficult and not particularly pleasant road to get here, but it’s entirely possible that the destination’s in sight. What that destination is? No idea.

We’ll find out, I guess. Watch this space.