It’s raining. Really, really, really raining. It is heavy rain, fat rain, noisy, slanty, lovely rain. Monte feels sick, and is cuddled up in bed with a coffee, looking out over the rain covered pastures and forest. Matty is sleeping. I feel warm after my coffee.

I haven’t registered to teach in Tasmania yet. I’m not sure if I want to. I’m not sure if I want to work and I am not sure that if I did work, I’d want to teach. I feel terribly guilty about not working. I hate not earning money, and I feel slack staying home all day.

What is the definition of work? If I fill up a day with looking after the children, tidying or cleaning the cabin, doing the washing and washing dishes and sorting clothes etc etc etc, is that work? Is it still work if I am not being paid? I feel like it’s work – much harder work than teaching a rowdy bunch of year 10 boys who are not interested in JD Sallinger or Macbeth. Much less intellectually stimulating too. If I have chosen to stay home with my children whilst they are still young, why do I feel so guilty? And when I was working I felt guilty for being away from my children.

It is moments like these, when Matthew is asleep and Georgia is at school that I feel guilty that I am not being more productive. Perhaps I need to define my work/career/job as providing for my family. I could sew clothes, knit jumpers and mittens and beanies and warm warm warm socks for these cold cold cold days that are to come. I could tend the garden and grow fat vegetables. I could keep the home all warm and snug and happy.

If it were 1958 I might think this a valid option for me, but for now, I am not so sure.

I’m a professional. At least I was. I am highly educated and rather intelligent, and I have always earned money. This is a paradigm shift for me. I think I have to change the way I see things. When I chose to have children I chose to change my life and redefine myself. When taking on the new responsibilities of my new role, I shed other factors that I thought defined who I am. In Adelaide we achieved everything we wanted to, and now I am struggling yet again to redfine who and what I want to be. Firstly, a mother – I will always be my children’s mother before all things. I am wife – part of a partnership that is balanced an equal.