What am I doing?

Now that I'm no longer burdened with tiresome work, my days are free to frolic in the woods or run through cornfields. Instead I spend hours hunched over my computer, banging out this sort of rubbish.

It's all about the three Rs: research, writing and reality TV. The days just fly by. And the words they spew out like my dinner after three or four too many Abts.

Working on a long project, it's easy to get bored with the subject after a year or two. Branching off into something shorter is reinvigorating. I tell myself. The reality is that I can't concentrate on any one thing for too long.

Leaving aside "Blitzkrieg!", which is 99% finished, but I haven't got around to publishing yet, "Free!" is my main project. And part of my long, long term project. To complete the book I originally intended to write: a history of UK beer 1700 to 1973.

When I had a particularly boring job, with no work and no internet access, I started the manuscript. Using a memory stick holding all sorts of brewing texts. 125,000 words is the result. I quite often go back to it to either nick bits or find sources.

Way too long a book, if I'd ever completed it. Instead, I've been publishing the chapters as books.

1880-1914 Free!
1914-1920 Armistice!
1920-1939 Peace!
1939-1945 Blitzkrieg!
1945-1973 Austerity!

Or, the case of some titles, not quite published yet.

I'm hoping I live long enough to get back to 1700. Now there's a sentence not many have ever written.

What am I doing? Having the only way I know.