2009 starting to blog

Writing has changed for me from being a painful act  to being a pleasure- even cathartic perhaps. it is important for me to establish kinship from heart to heart.

I started by sending what I wrote to friends-but now I find that most of them don't want to read it. I want a wider audience. Is this vanity or greed? possibly.

Can you ever have enough kinship? I don't think so.

During the past forty years I have lived and worked as a teacher in nine countries: Ireland, Northern Ireland, England, Ghana, Malawi, Mexico,(twice) Colombia,The United Arab Emirates (twice) Australia (four times) and Borneo.

All of these positions have lasted for a minimum of one year -and most for two , three or longer.

It has been very exciting but I have often felt very lonely as well-even with my family around. . I have found that many 'homelanders' from my native Ireland think I have bean on a permanent holiday for the past thirty years. They could not be more mistaken: living in a new culture is not all a bed of roses: It can be more like crossing a minefield at times. But it is always absolutely fascinating-and that is one reason I have continued to do it for so long

Practical expediency is another one of course. With a wife and family of three children one has to earn a living wherever one can. So, sometimes, one doesn't have a choice where to live-more and more one has to go where the work is. But I admit one motivation for my strange career path has simply been curiosity.

It has been my ambition since the early seventies to work in as many places in the world as possible in my career. Preferably, the further these places were away from Ireland -the better. I wasn't interested in just going to Europe to live. I wanted to go far away -to Africa and Latin America.

When I started this nomadic journey I had no idea of the price I would have to pay for such an ambition.

I'm still not quite sure what the total price for all this has been. -but there has been a price to pay for sure.

What sort of themes will I discuss in the blog?

Ideas mostly, I think. I have always liked to reflect, compare and contrast. But I will do it through story and anecdote to make it hopefully more entertaining for myself -since I have no readers.

I'd like to talk about so many issues to do with living in another culture drawing from my life as an Irishman in England and Australia, as a volunteer teacher in Ghana, as an expatriate teacher in Malawi, The U.A.E, Mexico, Colombia and Borneo.

I will reflect on issues which have fascinated me all my life and continue to fascinate me: selfishness, individualism, collectivism, loneliness, alienation, friendship, motivation, optimism, pessimism, hypocrisy, curiosity, sincerity, vanity, complacency, cowardice, arrogance, humility, fear.

This has been my daily bread and butter  for most of the forty years since I became able to reflect as a young boy.

In short: I am a student of human nature in general and my own in particular.

I am not a novelist-and could never be one. I have just finished re-reading Alexander Solzhenitsyn's 'Cancer ward'. I first read it twenty years ago and remember being impressed by it. But reading it the second time has been a powerful and humbling experience which has left me breathless with awe.

I am not a frequent reader of fiction-I like to read selected books slowly and intensively. This book for me is by far and away the most powerful novel I have ever read. For me it is a work of Art-a Masterpiece. Since I am not a literary or art critic I can say no more.

If anything at all I am a storyteller.

Most of all I want to share with readers my stories from my personal and professional life. These stories have led me to the (forlorn) belief that we all desperately need each other in this world: Conversely, without each other we destroy ourselves and each other. When man tries to be independent-he merely chases his tail and re-invents the wheel, becomes arrogant, destroys himself and those around him.

There is no choice: we do depend on each other-in our personal, public and political lives. I think this is even more the case now as a result of globalisation.

As I tell my stories you will see that I have always been talking to myself. Ever since I was a child I have been having a dialogue with myself- always asking myself questions. Sometimes, I have got answers, but more often than not the questions are just left hanging there in my life unanswered; they are a paper trail which show where I have travelled.

Through sharing some of these stories I also want to try to answer a really big question I have been putting to myself for years.

Am I an optimist or a pessimist?

At this moment I don't know.

So, here are the stories...