"Isn't this what you wanted?"

Shoveling Out in and worst Winter in 25 years!

Immigrating is hard work. Harder than you might think. There's nothing easy about it. And there's an emotional weight to it that is unexpected. If you haven't immigrated across the world with your family, not much money and no work lined up, you probably won't understand. And people don't, they don't get it and they get impatient with you. I've noticed it, I know Maryann has too, people seem to think "OK, you've moved, that part is over, you have a house, you got furniture, you finally got a job... so what the hell are you complaining about?! Isn't this what you wanted?" - Yes, it is, but...

The first couple of months here were extremely difficult, and it was all we could do to hang onto our sanity and not breakdown and scream and shout everyday! Not being able to find work, being rejected daily, and running out of money were our main concerns, and the wore on us. From day one we weren't able to relax. We missed our home in Ireland, The kids were all out of whack. Evelyn especially, she didn't know what was going on and she was acting up for a long time. She went back a full year on her potty training. And if you potty trained a toddler, to the point where they're fully trained and going by themselves, to go back a full year is extremely frustrating. I think for Evelyn it was the one thing she was in control of, she could determine that part of her fate, and in the midst of all this change, that she didn't have a say in, she was hanging onto that. (She's come around since by the way!)

Suddenly we didn't have family around, or friends, or something we didn't expect to miss so much, a community. We didn't have friends popping over daily, we were able to just walk to the shops and we never bumped into anyone we knew. Back home, you walk out you door to the shop and you meet five people you know. I failed to see it while there, but so much about living in Ireland is the pop-over and the stop-and-chat! We lost that here and we really really miss it!

The first night alot of Maryann's friends popped around to say hi, drop off food, furniture, bedding! It was a hot late summers evening, we were tired, jetlagged and emotional, but it was great, it felt like a welcome. The house hadn't been lived in for a while and smelled of stale smoke. That night we all slept on the floor, poorly! Felt a lot like camping! The kids were up and down all night, finally waking at 5am. Jetlag and kids do not go together well! We were glad to have a house, excited at the size of our back garden, that Georgie our dog loved, but daunted with the task ahead.

Maryann's parents drove cross country with a u-haul full of furniture and gifts for us, which was amazing and a brilliant help. That first week we truly would have been lost without them. They helped us get settled in and get the house set up and looking like a house. We had some lovely evenings with good food, samples of crafts beers and long held wine gifted by distant friends, it was nice.


After that Maryann's friend Claire held a party to welcome us, a lot of people showed up and bought a huge amount of gifts for us, items for the house, food, wine, towels, gift cards, vouchers, the level of generosity was truly overwhelming! Our car was over flowing!!! Oh yes, and our car, borrowed from the sister of a friend for a month until we found our own car. People were incredible. We felt welcomed. Excited.

But after a couple of weeks everyone when back to the lives and we went on with the job search. And as the weeks crawled by and the money began to run out we became worried, desperate, frantic. I met with a lot of time-wasters, advertising for work, but for some reason, not hiring! People who said they'd call, but never did. I was being ignored a lot and rejected a lot. It was incredibly frustrating. And disheartening. Maryann started work at Starbucks, which meant we had some money coming in, but nowhere near enough. People were still helping, making suggestions, emailing on our behalf, making introductions, but nothing was panning out.

During this time we felt quite isolated. We missed our friends and family back home, we missed the community. I don't drive (I'm currently learning), Indianapolis is quite spread out and there is nothing within walking distance from our house, no shopping areas, no businesses, it's mainly neighbourhoods, so I was stuck at home with the kids all day. That became hard. I started feeling trapped. I didn't see many people. Spent a lot of time chatting to my brother, who was doing an internship in California.

I felt as though my identity was slipping away. It was a strange feeling. At home I knew where I was, who I was. I was a filmmaker, that's what I did, and with my contacts and the relationships I had built up over the years, I could do that. If I wanted to make a film I could usually rally a troupe, get some press and raise some money. And when it was all done, people would come and see the finished product they had helped make it. But I couldn't do that here. I had arrived to a blank slate and faced reinventing myself, perhaps in a way I didn't really want to.

That was a struggle. But one I had to face. After all, this move was not all about me. It was about our family. In the tough times, when it look bleak and as if it wasn't going to work out, my first thought was always to pack up and go back to Ireland. But me second thought reminded me of why we left, the fact that we were struggling, living hand to mouth, in near poverty, and if anything came up, like a busted washing machine or an exploding cooker, we were unprepared and it would set us back for weeks. Something as simple as a household problem was devastating to us.

It's easy to look back with rose tinted glasses, but that fact is, we moved for a very good reason. We were broke, poor, and in the five years since Maryann immigrated for the first time, and this stupid recession hit, we were getting nowhere. And if ever we felt like we were getting somewhere our government would make some cut, of introduce and new charge and we would be back to square one. Rose tinted glasses off, looking back, no matter how much we miss Ireland, I do believe this was a better move for our family. There are more opportunites here in America, but no one is going to hand you a golden ticket. You have to work for it.

So, things got worse. We were feeling more isolated. People were back to their lives, and I think assuming we'd been here long enough that things were fine and we were just getting on with our lives too. But we weren't. We were in a sinking boat. And mostly people were rowing by, oblivious. But I'm not blaming, or bitter, people have their own lives to live, this was ours, and right then, it was bloody hard!

We came to December's rent. It was all the money we had left, we could pay a bill or two, and afford some food, but no more. We had already decided that Christmas was off the table. We thought we might be able to afford a small fake tree and one or two pressies for the kids, but nothing for ourselves. We had also started talking about leaving Indianapolis. We would have to pack up the house again and leaving the week after Christmas. Our two options were to go back to Ireland (which wasn't really an option, because we had no money) or move to Montana and see if Maryann's parents would take us in while we got on our feet again. Neither of which we wanted to do. We wanted to make it work. We wanted make a go of it for ourselves. We did not want to fail after how hard it was to get here, and all we'd been through.

The next day, literally, I got a call to come in for an interview that night. I went along got the job. It was that quick. And HUGE relief, as you can imagine. It meant we could stay. That there would be a wage coming in. We could have Christmas! We went out the next day and bought a tree. We couldn't afford it, but there would be a wage coming soon, we could catch up, finally!

I started that Monday. Working as a night supervisor in a grocery distribution warehouse. The hours, days and weeks would be long. But worth it in the end. We could have a family Christmas. But come Christmas Maryann got food posioning the night before Christmas eve, which left her sick all christmas. I was drafted to work 6 days over New Years. So although we could afford it, it was marred somewhat.

My weeks of work since have been hard. Busy time of year for food distribution, I've been work 6 day weeks, this week 7 days, and my agreed upon 50 hours a week has never been less than 70, and more. And I haven't had the same days off since I started, so it makes it hard to plan anything. So it has effected our family life greatly. Maryann is exhausted, she has the kids all the time, and sleeps a lot less these days, which seems to be effecting her health. Not to mention the fact that the worst winter in 25 years has just hit Indiana! With feet of snow, -36˚F wind chill, power outages, broken down cars in flooded car-parks - Sometimes it seems like even when we catch a break we can't catch a break!

But we'll get there. That I believe. It's been hard, and may get harder still, but we'll get there. We wanted to move here, for a very long time. And to that end I would like to point out that I have nothing against America! You may think I do, what with all my complaining! I've always worn my heart on my digital sleeve, and mostly it's with tongue firmly in cheek, which I think some people miss. But I love America. I do. It's why I wanted to move here. I grew up on American culture, American TV, music, movies, sport and culture. I had a baseball league in my street when I was 12 for crying out loud! No one knew what baseball was! The thing I wanted most as a kid was a baseball bat and mitt. One of my earliest dreams, before, or maybe just after I wanted to make movies, was to be a long distant truck driver here in the States! Something about the open road and the wide open spaces seemed very romantic to me. I've been coming here since 1998 and always enjoyed my trips and loved my stays and the experiences, the wholly American experiences I've had.

So when I moan try to remember it's not an America thing, it's an immigration thing. It's not this culture, or these people, I like this place and the people who are from here. It's leaving my home, being uprooted, leaving friends and family behind, handing the keys back on my grandmothers house, seeing my daughter sitting in the window and saying to herself, "Nana's taking a long time to come," it's that I don't like.  Oh, and snow!

So if you haven't been through it, please don't judge to harshly. Immigration is hard. In every way imaginable. But I do believe it will get easier. And we can relax again. Enjoy life again. And get back to working on our dreams again. Maybe then you can pop over, or stop and chat.

Even in the coldest Winters, there is beauty. We just have to look for it.

Leaving. Landing.

Leaving. Landing. A two part look back at my year. This part is the leaving part, the start of the year in Ireland, getting ready to immigrate and finally leaving. I have a busy week ahead. So part two might come next week. Meantime, enjoy.


Leaving.

The end of the year. A time for reflection. I've hardly had time to look back. Since I started my new job I haven't had much time to do anything but work, sleep and watch the kids for a couple of hours in the afternoon. But I had a couple of hours before I start a 6 day week of long night shifts, so I'll try. 

It's been quite a year. Less so creatively, but certainly personally. Two major events happened, my son was born and then we immigrated. So it's hard to squeeze writing and filmmaking around all that. I still managed it somehow. So here's a brief month by month breakdown of the year.

January began the way I like to start the year. I always like to kick the year off with something good, positive, exciting, to set up the rest of the year. So I organised a screening of Derelict in my hometown of Drogheda, at the Droichead Arts Centre, where I've screened all my films. And I can honestly say it was the best screening I've ever had. We almost had a full house and it was a great vibe. Some of the actors came along and we had a nice Q&A after the film, followed by some pints in my local Clarkes, it was a great night. Also, significant in two other ways, it was the 10 year anniversary of my first screening there. I first screened 'Girl in the Window', a no budget, no script, ghost story that never should have been shown in public! It was also, as far as I thought, my last screening there, as we were set to immigrate later in the year. It was a great way to start the year.

Right after the screening I was invited to join a local group called Ablevision to advice them how to make a short film. Ablevision are a group who give people with intellectual disabilities the opportunity to make film and television. They partner them up with professionals and allow them to be a contributing member of the team. It was a wonderful experience. I quickly realised my involvement would be more than just advising. I quickly became the writer/director of the project and guided the cast and crew through the script and the making of the film. We only had 8 weeks from start to finish to do the this. It's the quickest film I've ever been involved in. I really don't know how we did it. Considering that in February I also came here to Indianapolis for a week to meet people and start to set things up for moving here. 

I arrived in Indianapolis in the middle an ice storm. During that week I got frozen, stood up, ignored and dog bitten! But I also met a lot of lovely people! So it wasn't all bad. but I went home with mixed feelings about moving. I continued on the amazing process of making this short film, now called 'Joe & Sarah', with Ablevision Ireland. During this time my wife was pregnant with our son and due at the start of April. Which would give me time to finish the film, edit it, and get ready for the birth. Of course our son had other ideas.

My wife got quite sick in the first week of March. All through february she had a cold, which then developed into a bronchial infection, made worse by her pregnancy and the fact she couldn't take any medication to get through it. So it hung on and hung on and got worse and worse until one day in March, around my birthday, she ended up in hospital with severe chest pains. She was really sick, the sickest I've ever seen her, or anyone for that matter. After a day of excruciate pain and various diagnoses from several doctors and consultants they realised she had acute pancreatitis. Which is, apparently, one of the most painful things you can get, and throw full term pregnancy on top of that, she was not in a good way. The decided the best thing to do was to induce labour and deliver the baby early. This decision was made the day before I was supposed to audition actors for parts in 'Joe & Sarah'.

I went ahead with the audition. It was actually the day before the induction. I thought I had a month, I just found out my son was coming tomorrow, I was not in the room that day! Not mentally anyway. Luckily there were some good actors who made the decision easy. The next day Shea was born. It was the craziest, most frightening, experience of my life. There was a point during this week where I feared for the life of my wife and unborn soon. But thanks to the care or the nurses, doctors, consultants and midwives of Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda, all of whom were professional, personable, caring and reassuring, they both came out the other side in one piece.

The first day of shoot on 'Joe & Sarah' was the first day Maryann and Shea came home! I would have much rather be home, but I couldn't pull out of the film at that late stage. I didn't really want to anyway, didn't want to let the guys down, we'd become a team at that stage. I guess sometimes life just goes that way, sometimes it take everything away and leaves you twisting in the wind, sometimes it piles everything on at once and tests you to your limits. Admittedly, I was enjoying it, as tiring and stressful as it was. I had nothing to be annoyed about, my son was home, my wife was over the worst of her sickness and on the mend and I was making a movie. Life was good.

The film premiered in April, at the Droichead Arts Centre, back again, and a great experience. It coupled with a mini-festival, a celebration of what Ablevision were trying to do, so many groups from around the area came along. I partook by giving a talk on low-budget filmmaking. Later that night was an award ceremony, where 6 short films were screened by local groups, and then the premiere of 'Joe & Sarah'. The film went down really well and had a hugely positive reaction. The whole day and evening was an incredibly positive event. It was a privilege to be a part of, and the watch these guys, especially Stephen and Anne, who played Joe and Sarah, and to watch how they performed, over came shyness, and enjoyed themselves.

The film was done. Time to get ready for the move. We had bought our tickets, were leaving in September. It was now June. We had three months to get ready. To save some money. We had none. To pack and ship what we could. To pack and store the things we could not part with. And then to sell everything else. June began with one sunny day in Laytown when my brother Noel and I parked up for the day at a car boot sale. I spent the day haggling pennies over many a treasured and long held possession. I spent the day saying goodbye to memories while my customers spent the day holding back smiles over easy gotten bargains.

Then began the long and annoying process of flogging everything we own of facebook! Sorry facebook friends! Thank to Lisa Redmond, who bought most of my furniture!!! My best customer. As the house emptied sadness set in. The home we had built was being stripped. It began to feel like less of a home. But the memories there began to fight for their foothold and became unforgiving. It was hard. Perhaps harder for me as I had grown up in that house. It was my Grandparents house you see. They had moved into it in the early seventies, my mother lived there before she got married. I spent a great deal of my childhood there. My grandfather died when I was very young, so I have very little, if any, memory of him, but I remember my grandmother in vibrant and colourful detail. I remember warmth, toast, good dinners, butter, TV, a soft couch, a scratching kitten, a sharp tongue if ever I stepped out of line, and the soft glow of lamps cushioned in floral couch covers and curtain of an evening when I would pop around for tea and chat and cake. 

The room, the walls, the air in that house was pungent with those memories. I have scars from falls I took there. To say goodbye to that was incredibly difficult. But what I found hardest of all was saying goodbye to my children's first home. Remembering that this was were I brought my daughter home during Christmas of 2009. And laid her down beside the fire, while 'It's a Wonderful Life' played on TV. And watching her grow in that room, how that house was her haven. How relaxed and comfortable she felt there. All she learn there. How she grew and became the bright, funny, special girl in between those walls. 

I think what helped me get through it in the end was realising that the memories I was hanging onto were related to the people, and not the bricks and mortar. I will always be sad about the people who aren't there anymore, but I carry their memory with me. And as for the kids, they're here with me, their faces remind me, not the empty room they once stood in. And we're building memories all the time. Life is in the present.

July and August went the same way. Largely about making money, packing up and preparing for the move. It turned out to be a beautiful Summer in Ireland. It was sunny and warm. And for the first time in years there was a real sense of community in our neighbourhood, the warm weather brought people out, they were fixing up their homes, cutting their grass, chatting with each other in open front doors and the kids were out on the street playing and in and out of each other's house. It reminded me of what it was like when I was growing up. It reminded me of what I was missing over the years and part of the reason we were moving. And so, doubt set in and I really began to wonder if moving was the right thing to do. If leaving a life long community was right, if taking our kids away from the home they knew, the friends they were making and the family and grandparents they loved, was the right thing to do.

September rolled around pretty quickly. We were living surrounded by boxes. It was truly time to go. On our last week we moved into my parents house. Which was crowded. But it was nice to spend it with my parents. I went back and forth to our house to clean it out. The house was actually a council house, or a city house, even though it had been in the family for 4 generations it still belonged to someone else. Someone who could care less about us, our family, or our history there. Over the years the house required maintenance, much of which I did myself, a lot of which was down to our landlord, who did very little. 40 years of tenancy and we were largely ignored. The week after we moved out, the house was gutted and modernised, made like new, for strangers. I guess that's how it goes. The loyal customer get shafted, while the new customers get all the deals and discounts. 

On the last day in the house I was so close to tears it hurt. Every empty room I went into screamed a thousand memories at me. I took a break to go and do a radio interview at LMFM it was nice to be able to say goodbye to the town too. Which has been so kind to me over the years. A town that has stepped out and supported my films since I began. And as I walked out of the radio station I passed the school where I shot my first film, Emily's Song. I stepped onto the street that rises above the town and could to look down over it. It felt fitting. Felt like I was saying goodbye to it. Saying goodbye to a friend, a family member, my town, my hometown. Drogheda. A scruffy little town with an attitude and fowl mouth you can't help but love.

I packed up the house. Sold off the last of the furniture. Gave the rest to a local charity. My parents, Maryann and the kids called around and we all said goodbye to the house. In many ways, for me at least, it was like a finally farewell to my Grandmother too, who I still felt was with me in someway while we were there. I brought Evelyn, my daughter, into each room, "Goodbye Daddy's office," we said, "Goodbye Mammy and Daddy's room, I enjoyed bouncing on the bed. Goodbye bathroom and tubby, thanks you for all my fun tubby's. Goodbye my room, and pictures on the wall," there she found a deflated ball that Georgie (our dog) had burst. She grabbed and clung to it, "This is my ball," she said, "It is, you keep it," I said.

We said goodbye to upstairs. As we walked downstairs and she stepped so confidently, I was reminded of how she learned to climb them. Then downstairs, we said goodbye to the lving room and kitchen, memories of tv shows, baking, dinners and games. Then out to the garden, probably Evelyn's favourite place. We said goodbye to the blackberry bush that we picked berries together for Daddy's blackberry crumble. We said goodbye to the spiders who lived under the leafs, every time Evelyn would pick a berry she would say "Sorry Mr. Spider, sorry to disturb you." We said goodbye to the nieghbours cats, the "tigers in the jungle," as she called them, all 20 of them. In the garden Evelyn would play the day away, and talk over the fences to the neighbours, she had her own special friendships with them. Deirdre, who owned the cats, Marie, an elderly lady who watch her and giggle and especially Ann, who would hang her washing on the line, and talk to her. But Ann broke her ankle, and wasn't in the garden at the end.

Then we left. We closed the doors and locked them. Everyone went home and I went to the council office. Who were shirty with me because I was an hour late. I said I just locked up the house where four generations of my family have lived, give me a break. That lady went away, unsympathetic, with her piece of paper. But I got to hand my keys back to Bosco, my old rent collector, my grandmother's old rent collector, a kind and generous man, always with a friendly smile and a funny story. I wrote Slán agus Beannacht based on him, but you can see the real Bosco here on RTE's Nationwide. He gave me a smile and uttered his famous phrase, "Slán agus beannacht" (which means, goodbye and blessings) and it felt like a chapter had been closed, in the right way. I was able to walk away with a smile, ready for the future.

The next day we said our godbyes at the house and pilled into a taxi, driven by my cousin Thomas, who had promised the lift a year earlier, true to his word he was at the house at 6:30am. The drive to the airport was filled with polite small talk and over wrought emotion. As always, you think you have time to say everything you want, you think you have hours, but time enters a different realm in airports, it slides through your hands as if covered in grease.

I had to organise Georgie's flight, she was in her cage, afraid and unaware of what was going on. Evelyn was excited, nervous, and completely unaware of the gravity of the situation. Eventually we got our bags and dog away. And made it to security. Saying goodbye to my mother was all too quick. She hugged and kissed Evelyn. Her little granddaughter. They pulled apart, Evelyn wanted to get on the plane, to start her adventure. My mother wanted to get to the bus. Away from this goodbye, that was all to big. Their own special bond, stronger than anything I've ever seen, being severed in front of my eyes because I wanted to build a better life. But would it really be better? That doubt again. And a raw and ragged emotion clawing at my throat to get out that was desperately trying to keep contained. Immigration is hard. It's different. It's not going on holiday. It's not "I'll see you soon," it's leaving. And leaving is hard.

The flight was OK actually. Emotions were high. There were a couple of tantrums. But they were short and the kids did pretty well. We landed in a hot Chicago on September 10th in the afternoon and as I stepped off the plane the woman in front of me fainted.

While I helped her to the ground and fanned her with a paper while she lay there, everyone walked by, hurrying to catch their connecting flights. I thought about home and my life from now one. My home, where if I fell I could be sure there would be someone there to catch me. But in this new place, where I knew no one, if I fall, will there be someone there to catch me? Of will they hurry by?

The Potter's Wheel

The job is going well. First week done. Getting settled in. Learning something new. Meeting new people. Finding out more about Indiana people. The homegrown kind. And as suspected, they're just like everyone else. Might as well be working in a factory back in Drogheda. I'm working with a lot of people who are born and bread Indianapolis, people who've worked in this particular factory since they were kids. Salty dogs. Lifers. I'm not a lifer. I think I'm a drifter. I drift in and out of jobs, careers, clicks and groups. I tend not to stick around too long. In saying that though, I think I'll be here for a while. No bad thing. I need the job, the pay, the security. Being without any of that in this country is a terrifying thing. I suppose it is anywhere. But I've never felt so desperate as I have here in the last three months.

I suppose that comes down to many things. The wrench of immigrating. The high emotion of taking the kids out of their childhood home, away from there grandparents, family, friends and neighbours. Tossing them into a boiling pot of unknown soup, where they watched their normally settled and sure parents flounder alongside them. I can't imagine how that must have been for my daughter. She turns 4 in two days. Her personality, the one she will carry with her through her life, is being moulding right now, everything that's happening in her life is shaping the person she will become. She's the clay. We're the potters. It's a hefty and frightening responsibility. And one I don't take lightly.

Being in a position where I could not provide in the least is a place I've never been before. I left Ireland because I wanted to give my kids a better chance in life. Things there were bad. Desperate. Trying to carve out a living was simply impossible. There was no getting ahead, and every time it left like we might be getting ahead there, some rug was pulled out from under us. Either in new taxes, cuts or charges. I felt like I was being watched, "Oh, Frank Kelly's getting ahead of himself there, seems to think he might make something of himself, cut his benefits €100, and just so he's not enjoying himself too much, close his favourite shop so he cant buy dvds anymore."

So, we came here, but it was literally a case of out of the frying pan and into the fire. We had help, yes, back up and support. We had people looking out for us. People were incredibly generous, yes. But they also had their own lives to lead. Which they went straight back to after we had arrived. We were still fledglings, having just left the nest and we were left to flying on our own, and we were falling. Two months in we realised we hadn't really heard from anyone, no one had dropped around. We were at our yet lowest ebb, money was running out fast, we were stressed, fighting, not sleeping, feeling like fools and failures, and completely on our own. I said to Maryann one day "I think everyone thinks we're fine, they think, 'Oh, Maryann and Frank have been here two months, I'm sure they're well settled!' " We weren't. We were in a torrent and close to drowning.

At home at least I had my family. My parents, my brother and sister, all close by. I had friends. I knew the town. It was familiar. All that was gone here. And I did not feel like myself. I left stripped bare. Alone. Lonely. Vulnerable. Helpless. Stupid. Worthless. Unsure of my own identity. At home I had a strong sense of self, of who I was. I was a filmmaker. That was what I did. I wrote and I made films. And I was going to keep doing that until I was able to make a real living at it. But that was gone here. Really, when it came down to it, I wasn't a filmmaker anymore. I couldn't make films. I could hardly write. I couldn't find the time and when I did my head was so muddled I couldn't think straight. The bubble had burst and tangled all up in my brain.

Who was I?

I don't know. I had lost my identity. The one it had taken me a decade to build. In just two months it was gone. I had no means to leave the house, go anywhere by myself or buy anything for myself. It was a very strange feeling. I was getting depressed. Which was no good for anyone.

It felt as thought people had gone away too. I don't know that they had. At home a couple of months would go by and I wouldn't hear from one friend or another, no big deal, we'd talk eventually. But in this situation, feeling so isolated, that was amplified. So not hearing from anyone for so long, and after such a monumental change - after all, I had just immigrated with my family for crying out loud, a little check-in wouldn't have gone astray! I thought I might hear more from people, I thought people might answer some emails... but they didn't. They didn't. And I was alone. In my little house. That I did not know. That was not mine and closing in around me. Wondering, how the hell I got there.

This is the reality of it. The truth of it. I don't want to lie about it or shy away from it. Immigrating is hard. It's an emotional wrench. It's not a holiday, especially when you're not walking into a job and especially for someone like me who's carved out such a specific niche that it's nearly impossible to employ me in anything else. But someone did. Someone took a chance. Saw passed the piece of paper and realised there was a capable person willing to work standing in front of them. And I'm grateful to that person. They made all of the above disappear. In one single sentence "So, would you like to give it a go?" all that dissolved.

What it did too was release my mind to creative thought again. That bubble gum that was tangling up the strands of thought, was gone, instantly. I felt it come back that quickly and I immediately wanted to write, wanted to reach out to people and start getting projects started. The security of that job gave me that and for the first time in a long time I realised the importance of that. Along with that I felt like I was me again, and I could be the same husband to my wife as I had always been, the same Dad to my kids. I could provide for them, support them, nourish them and turn that potters wheel more confidently again. Not worried so much anymore that I was going to ruin anyone's future.

I'm still working on it. We've been struggling for many years, financially speaking. This is the first salaried position I've ever held. So I'm not sure what changes it will bring. We're still trying to break habits of a lifetime. We're still not used to the idea that it might be OK, that think might work out for us, that we can stop worrying. When life throws nothing but punches, you learn how to duck, until ducking is what you do. When life stops throwing punches, it's not so easy to drop your guard. So I'll keep ducking for now.

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.