Long walks on the beach . . .
What else is there to say?
If you're curious to get a bit more info on me – as a teacher, a writer or a human being – I shall oblige and colour in the rough sketch you've already got.
As far as I remember, my childhood was normal enough and I don't think I was particularly unusual. But something happened when adolescence hit – and again when it crashed into the noble rock of adult reality. In both cases I seemed to grow apart from my peers, onto my own 'road less travelled'. Though I have always been very social and had many friends, I am totally at ease in my own company and love to be with just myself and the cosmos. There's so much to see and feel within stillness, within imagination, within rambling reflections.
Part of what made me different (or eccentric) is likely two things: being an identical twin, and being legally blind. The former meant I never felt a great need for social validation, as I knew the guy who understood me best had my back. The latter meant I couldn't make out faces more than a few yards away, so wouldn't drive nor become football captain, couldn't engage in the usual at-distance social communications, so was prepared from an early age for ruthless independence and the cultivation of my mind, to balance out these limitations of nature. On top of this there is the matter of reincarnation and the eternal evolution of the soul – but we can circle back to that over a drink some time. So I always felt different and was always on the lookout for ways to achieve my place in the world, doing something special that would give me the keys to freedom, to the visions I dreamed. The rest followed naturally.
I studied hard in school, got top grades and went to study Law and History at the University of Western Australia, my mind on material wealth and groundbreaking enterprises. But after the tragic death of a close friend, I turned away from the drier academic stuff – no longer caring about the future they could win me – and instead completed a Bachelor of Arts, double majoring in Philosophy and Political Science. This I did just for the joy of it. But upon completion of my studies, the question of making a living presented itself and I decided to teach English as a Foreign Language while I figured things out. Ten years later, I'm still teaching and have figured out plenty on the way!
For the last few years I have also been teaching a mix of holistic and classical education to homeschoolers, sharing my growing awareness of truth and what makes a happy human. After the passing of my friend in my early twenties, I went through deep confusion, depression, anxiety and soulsearching – which in time bore beautiful fruit in the knowledge of how to heal. I am still healing in my own way, as we all are, and this depth empowers all of my teaching. I help kids and teens with the knowledge, skills and mindsets that will free their potential to be its blissful best, but at the core it's always about being oneself and coming home to the Now. Teaching all this in one-to-one sessions was and is profoundly fulfilling, but since expanding into also running workshops at schools, it's a whole other level. I'm able to be and connect with dozens of kids who are early on their journey into the world and back. Some are more receptive than others to what I have to say, but I find my approach resonates. Maybe because I've suffered enough, and have come to a place of realness, where I truly wish to help others in just the way I have needed it.
In the background, since I was fifteen I have always been writing. It began as poetry here and there popping up like flowers amid the lawn of day to day living, enlightening my soul with their rare visions. Over the years the volume of poetry increased, and has come and gone in waves, sometimes a daily flood, occasionally drought, but always flowing through my life. I only shared these with my brother and from time to time with close friends. Perhaps I was shy or more likely I just didn't care. I wrote for myself, for eternity, for God, for the truth of life. I always intended to publish one day, but felt no great urgency to get onto it. Around the turn of my twenties, I began pouring forth with essays on the nature of things – again just for my desk.
Though I had ideas for stories, it was not until my late twenties that I really began working on any novel or short story at all. Somehow it's like it had to mature on the back of everything else. But once I started, I couldn't stop. There were weeks in my late twenties when I spent 12-15 hours a day, for days on end, just writing. It was bliss, even if the work itself might not put others in as blissful a state! I made the usual errors and clichés, falling into pits and getting back out, dusting myself off and continuing. Over time my prose began to resemble 'good'. It's very much an ongoing journey, but after the blessing of such solitude in my little apartment in the heart of misty Dublin in the early 2020s, my fiction began to take form and is now my main focus for future work. While I'm teaching others how to expand their minds and live their best, while I'm sharing joy and growth with my wife and children, while I'm playing music and having a laugh with friends, I'm always in the background scheming about the next story. It's like a microcosm, a wee little mirror of the heavens, a delicious little snack for the mind which once ingested can send the reader on a journey of self-illumination, consciousness and the delight of beauty shining in written form. Writing is not yet the main occupation of my hands, but it certainly is of my heart and mind. In 2025, I published three books, two of poetry and one of prose: Aye Am: Poems in Search of Spiritual Awakening followed by Homecoming to a Foreign Land and finally Rings Round the Mind: Short Stories & Tall Tales. But I shall not rest until I've put to page all the ideas God has lent me from the celestial shelf. Many more books are on the way, to add a bit of colour to the library mosaic.
So that's a bit and a lot about me. I hope you enjoyed your journey into my journey (into my journey into your journey). Life's a lot of fun when you are free enough within to seek your own path, and when that path is chosen in such as way as to help others find their best path. We're all searching for something in the wilderness, and I've found so much worth cherishing, and God only knows what else is out there for eyes willing to see and to believe.
