Rick Morton has set up a makeshift office in the patio in his mum’s backyard in Boonah. 

A chook pants in the shade under the table next to him. Washing flutters on a Hills hoist behind. Somewhere nearby, corellas are causing a ruckus. 

Among the clutter on the desktop are some gardening tools, a packet of smokes and ashtray, a bottle of Dettol, a takeaway coffee cup and a laptop. Also, the manuscript of what will soon be his third book. 

Stuck in “book edit purgatory,” it’s Wednesday and he’s yet to start writing his weekly feature for The Saturday Paper. 

He hasn't stopped since March. But when the week is done, he will finally get a chance to take a break. He plans on splashing some of his book advance around his hometown, taking his mum, Deb, out. He’s not “buying anyone a jetski or anything” but, on Christmas 2020, the Mortons will eat whatever they want. 

It wasn’t always this way. Thanks to the generosity of the local church, growing up, Mrs Morton always made sure the kids had something to unwrap and nice things to eat. 

They were often donated, but the presents and the food came at a cost. 

“Christmas has always been a difficult one for me because I know how hard it was for Mum when we were little,” Morton says. 

“It’s just such a stressful period. I never had to worry about buying Christmas presents ... but I picked up her stress.”

Having overcome disadvantage to forge a successful career as a journalist and author, Morton says it is “easy to forget there are still people who live like that”. In fact, suddenly, there are many more. 

“There are people who are in desperate situations right now who haven't been in them before in recent memory,” Morton says. 

Which is “an awful thing”, but also a “chance to reset our understanding and our empathy”.

“We haven't really been that responsive to people who are in entrenched welfare,” Morton says. “We have a tendency to blame them and worry about why the government is spending money on them.

“Yet, when we've got all these newly unemployed people, suddenly it's a crisis.” 

If crisis presents opportunity, for Morton, 2020 has opened the door to a bigger conversation about “what it looks like to support people who are doing it tough”. 

“This year in particular shows that, in many cases, you are at the mercy of circumstances well outside your control,” he says. 

And it’s not just money that makes Christmas stressful for many. It can also be love, or more to the point, the lack of it. 

Which is something Morton has been thinking about a lot lately. So much so, he wrote a book on it.  When published in March, it will be his third. And it’s “the Big One”.

Some people have children by accident, which is more or less what happened to Morton with his second book, On Money. It started as an essay which his publishers liked, and it went from there. 

But in My Year Of Living Vulnerably, Morton seeks to understand something which gets to the very core of who he is, and which he hopes will make him better. 

It’s “basically a series of essays about love”. 

“Mum laughed when I told her that and said, ‘what on earth do you know about love?’” Morton says.

“And the answer is nothing.”

But Morton is not talking about romantic love. The book came about in early 2019 when he was following Prime Minister Scott Morrison on the campaign trail and was diagnosed with Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Morton traces this back to the emotional abuse of his father. The book is a “big nerd project” where he delves into the science of the mind and, in trying to understand it, aims to overcome that lack of love. 

Despite the adversity he faced growing up, Morton is grateful for the things he did have. He considers himself lucky. Lucky for the love of his mother. For the simple Christmases he enjoyed with his brother and sister. Lucky that he loves coming home from Sydney to a place which loves him in return. 

Despite trying to keep a low profile until he has finished work, Morton’s already given two impromptu book club talks, one of which happened when he ducked into the local Indian restaurant to pick up takeaway. 

Morton knows that for others, though, home and family aren’t such a pleasure to return to.

“There are people who grow up in poverty and they've got parents who weren't there for them,” he says. 

“I've experienced lack of love from one parent and that's almost derailed me throughout my life.

“I can't imagine it coming from both parents.

“There are a whole bunch of people out there who are quite within their rights to never go back for Christmas.” 

Those tensions, no doubt, are heightened in a year which was “one great big heap of anxiety”.  

But if 2020 was “good for one thing”, Morton hopes the year has “taught us a few lessons”. 

And Morton says not being able to return home to visit his mum for most of the year helped him put things in perspective. 

“It’s about being with the people you love and care about no matter whether they’re family or friends,” he says.

“Whether that’s Christmas, or any other time, do it every time you can.”