Hats in the air again

I've left the Armidale Express, after spending three and a half years there as a journalist, senior journalist, and occasionally acting editor. It's a cliche to say it was a difficult decision, but it was - so difficult that I had to make it quickly and emotionally. Reason was unreliable, always telling me that of course you can cope and certainly things will get better.

In a Facebook post, I said:

I've been like one of those frogs swimming in increasingly hot water for several months; now I've suddenly jumped out of the pot. But it is sad, I did love being a journo.

One of my friends responded that I was "Still a journo. Now a free one." Time will tell if she is right.

For now, all my former hats - from IT, business, writing and academia - are in play again. A few have settled tentatively on my head already. I will be running memoir workshops in Sydney this month and mentoring overseas students as they write about their experiences of studying in Australia. There are also a couple of part-time PR gigs in the pipeline, possibly, and this morning I agreed to take on a hefty stack of university marking in one of the communications units at UNE. And my husband hasn't been backward in coming forward with a to-do list of Hutchinson Software work either.

I'm looking forward to all of it - and time in between to do my own writing.