September is over and I can honestly say I’m glad for that because it’s been a rough month that has completely torn my habits apart for the time being.

September started, at first, as any other month. After the (quite harsh) hike at the end of August (which I’ll get to next week), I decided to rest the next weekend. This had a couple of extra reasons. The first was that it was still quite hot and I felt having enough of dealing with the heat and the other was that my town runs a celebratory festival for its anniversary which meant I would be getting up after not that great sleep (as the stadium where it takes place is just two blocks away). So, instead, I took the time to clean up and take care of some other chores instead.

Things took a turn for the worse early in the next week – the forecast was dire – persistent rain from Thursday for 4-5 days with flood warnings issued for a major part of Central Europe. As there was no hint of change with the weekend looming, we did what was necessary and canceled the planned hike. By Thursday evening, the rain started, and while it didn’t seem to be that strong here in the town, it was much worse in the hills.

By Saturday morning, the situation was catastrophic and only getting worse. By Sunday, some places have gotten 5 months worth of rain in just 60 hours. This had an unexpected turn of events for me (living safely in an elevated part of the town) that I used the downtime to get back to writing after quite some time and managed to edit several scenes, especially as I remained home on Monday and Tuesday due to some technical issues at work (though the place avoided flooding).

And this had confirmed what I speculated about lately, that my writer’s block might not be caused as much by actual writing issues but simply because I don’t have the brainpower for creative work on workdays and with Saturdays given almost exclusively to hiking, Sunday is mostly for some chores and winding down. While the edits I made are nowhere near enough, I have a more specific direction for the changes I want to make. And because the land will need more time to dry up and recover enough to be safe for hiking, I can expect more downtime that might give me the chance to progress with my writing a bit more in the coming weeks.

Another issue with planning further hikes in the near time isn’t just the soaked ground that might be risky when it comes to mudslides and falling trees is the damage to infrastructure – roads and railroads have been affected on a scale that rivals the 1997 flood and some might be out of order for months, which will make planning hikes that much harder.

Thus, it’s hard for me to expect what October might bring. I hope it won’t be another disaster and that alone would probably make me happy. Climate change seems to be out in force not just here. So, wherever you are, I wish you a calm autumn.