Getting Started

Two days shy of three months since we landed in the US. September 10th 2013, we arrived in Chicago, on the 11th we drove 3 hours to Indianapolis, our new home. My Wife, my young Daughter, Son, our dog Georgie and myself.

It's been a tough three months, it's been a tough year to be honest. And last week it looked like we wouldn't make it, it looked like we would have move again, to another town, or maybe go back to Ireland, and that looked like a good option! In our darkest times, and there were many, I'll admit, I buckled and panicked and jumped online to check the prices of flights the hell out of here! Even though we had nothing to go back to, family, yes, but no work, no money, no house, no belongings, we had given all that up to come here and build a better life. But as days, weeks and months passed and all we faced was rejection from employers, we started to believe that we had made an expensive and foolish mistake.

That was until a few days ago, when I got a call, out of the blue, to come in for an interview with a company that evening. We rushed home. I got my interview clothes on. We went along. I met with several people. Talked. Asked questions. I could see them glancing at each other during the interview. I took a tour of the building. When I came back and was offered the job. Could not believe it.

Seems like the cogs were turning. Something that was set in motions many months ago, while back in Ireland, finally turned in my direction and tonight I start my first job in America, my first "Job" for many years. Not as a filmmaker, director, designer, artist, photographer, none of these things, no, but as the night-shift supervisor in a grocery distribution warehouse!

Hey, it pays well, and at this stage of the game it feels like something of a miracle that it arrived when it did. You see, we had put down our last months rent, the last we could afford anyway. We were running out of money fast and we were resigned to the fact that in two weeks we would have to start packing up and on New Years day, we would be homeless, packed into a mini-van and drive across country to move into my wife's parents house.

I've lived on or under the poverty line for a long time. Back in Ireland we struggled, we hit bottom several times. But I never felt so close to being homeless as I did last week. And with a family, with two small children, innocent and happy kids, seeing nothing wrong in the world except maybe the injustice of not being allowed sweets before dinner, it was tearing me up inside. It was frightening.

But as I sit here today I have a new anxiety tumbling around in my stomach, it's an excited, nervous apprehension. The kind I get before a screening of one of my films. The kind that tells me I really want to do well. And that regardless, something good is about to happen.

The last time I felt that was at the beginning of this year, and it was indeed just before a screening on one of my films. Then things took a turn, started to spin, and kept spinning until just four days ago. But that's another story, one I'll tell in this new blog, as well as charting my new life here in America. I'll keep up Celluloid Journey, don't worry, I have a lot of film stuff planned. This will be a more personal blog. A look inside, and out, as a stranger in a strange land, and feeling all the stranger for it.

I hope you'll join me.