I launched my first book a week or so ago. I mean it rolled off the presses, invitations were dispatched to family, friends and people I do business with and we gathered, champagne in hands, and the publisher declared a book with my name on the cover "officially launched".

What a hoot! Every moment between me finishing writing the book and the minute it was declared launched, I was a basket case. Seriously nervous. A big chicken, according to some.

I don't know what it was that terrified me so much. I was obviously keen for the book to be circulated in the world, otherwise I wouldn't have written it. But the idea of a launch, ironically enough as I am a public relations consultant, never occurred to me and when the idea of one was first raised I found it to be an egotistical concept.

Once it was over, it became just a party and I loved it.

Everyone was so pleased for me and my kids were just bursting with pride. It was an opportunity for my friends and family to see me in professional mode and the people in my business world to see me gushing. Strangely, walking both roads seemed to fit nicely.

It felt good as a single woman to be doing something like that, as if writing and launching your own book is a post-divorce rite of passage. One of those moments when, like the FWW website says, single doesn't mean solitary.

My book is called "Palm Trees and Margaritas - Finding Your Oasis in a Busy World" and it's about making plans to live your best possible life and consciously seeking pleasure and fulfilment. You can check it out at Palm Trees And Margaritas if you would like to see what all the nervousness was about.

December is always the busiest month for my consulting business. Because I have a teaching job as well, I have marking and paperwork to do to wrap up the teaching year, at the same time as planning for next year's classes.

And because I am lucky enough to have a big January holiday (that's the standard thing in Australia), I need to get most of January's work done in December.

So I find the end of the work year, pre-summer holiday timing of Christmas and its festivities very inconvenient.

I don't have any religious interest in Christmas, nor any other interest in Christmas really, but it is part of community and family life sufficiently that I am involved in celebrating it anyway.

Australian Christians all run around so busily pre-Christmas that we call it the silly season.

I feel like I am balancing busy and festivity until virtually Christmas Day itself, when busy is forced out by virtue of the reality that family festive commitments are upon me and aided by the fact that the endless busyness means the work is done for the year.

As I write this, I am up to my ears in work. I find myself strangely looking forward to Christmas Day and that must be at least partly due to the rest it gives me.

Perhaps that's not quite what all the fuss is supposed to be about, but maybe it doesn't matter why families spend Christmas Day together. Maybe what matters is that they actually take the time to stop the world for a day and just be together.

There is an irony in that I am marking six years of life as a single parent with getting a job writing about divorce. Something about that makes me smile.

Sure, it's probably not the six years of single parenting that makes me smile - well not all the time anyway. It's the fact that I have the chance to voice my thoughts and feelings about life after divorce.

My approach is "get on with it," but sometimes I have to consciously put myself in gear to live the way I want to.

With three kids at three different schools and a job, business, house and a car to run, sometimes the best thing I can do is acknowledge it's hard, take some breathing space, then get on with it.

I read the other day that there are 40 million divorced women in America. That's twice the population of Australia - where I live - and a force to be reckoned with.

Any reminder that we are not doing this alone empowers us. Those big numbers evidence we are not alone, but it is online communities like this one that make it really feel like it.

I'm glad to be part of this, and not for the reason my son pointed out when I announced my blogging gig: "Cool. You've found a way to make divorce pay."