To be continued...

The time has come.

Kangaroos in Deutschland is going on temporary hiatus.

My decision has nothing to do with creative inspiration or motivation to write: I have at least five or six half-written posts and ideas for a further eight or nine - four of those from the last week alone - and the temptation to curl up on my bed with a mug of tea and a biscuit is very strong. But one thing is preventing me from doing that.

That issue is time. Until about a month ago, I had a lot of it. I worked part-time, and could fill in the rest of the week tutoring, translating, teaching myself Turkish, being a tourist when I wanted to, and writing until my heart was content.

In August however, I applied for a place in a Master's course in linguistics at Humboldt University in Berlin. I was accepted, passed a German language test, and two weeks ago, I started classes. The number of contact hours is relatively low, but the preparation required for each class is enormous. On top of that, it's in German, and my linguistics terminology is not only in English, but also pretty rusty, since I finished my studies in 2004. This means more preparation and revision time.

Considering that I'm still working twenty hours a week at the English language school, I don't have a lot of time left over. I've had to stop the weekly voluntary tutoring I was doing at a local library, helping school kids (primarily with Turkish and Lebanese background) with their English and German homework. I've also had to stop tutoring a friend's son on Saturdays: I miss the cash, and the tutoring itself, but I just don't have the time for the travel or the tutoring.

The ideas will keep coming, and I'll keep writing them down, storing them up for the Christmas holidays and the semester break in March, but until then, they're going to have to remain ideas, and I'll do my very best to resist the urge to flesh them out until I can justify spending the time on something other than university work.

I just hope it's possible to snap-freeze creative motivation... and that it doesn't have a defrost-by-date. Guess we'll find out.

Until then...