Be gentle with me...

I feel like a little boy about to dip his toes in the water. I've been invited here but, like those odd moments when you're left alone in someone else's house, or, 'eck, even in their bedroom, it doesn't feel quite right. I feel like having a snoop about. Peeling back the edges of this whole Moichido Co-operative to find out what lurks in the cupboards, maybe trying on the pants... But then I feel the weight of Pik back in the room. He's just a few feet behind me. He's breathing down my neck. Just don't try anything funny...

Hayato, I know - via the medium of the world famous internet. I've read DanInJapan's inner thoughts on his blog. But, as yet, we're still to communicate directly. Does he know who I am? I guess he's about to find out.

Right now, this whole thing feels weird. I'm not used to Blogger for a start. It feels a whole lot more modern than the dreadful designed for geeks crimsonblog interface that I'm stuck with over at Killing Time.

I write this mere hours after returning from the Republic of Ireland. County Cork to be a bit more specific. It was my first visit. I expected Angela's Ashes, a lot of rain and potato famine hangover. The reality was a whole lot more dazzling. As ever, when e'er I move beyond my doorstep, I feel hideously ignorant about world matters, geography and history. And you can't change that on a 7 day trip. All I know is that the Irish are incredibly friendly folk, petrol's cheaper and Guinness tastes better. And that's something I'd guessed before I'd even turned the key in the ignition.

Interesting to read Dan's somewhat confessional entry. I especially liked the conclusion, the stuff about him standing in the middle. There must be something in the water these days. We're just six months away from a lengthy stay in New Zealand that will, in effect, also signal the end of my life as a full-time journalist. It's been a painful few years, career wise. I'm still not sure how I ever got into it. Being a hack just doesn't appeal, never appealed and isn't even a good way to earn the money to pay the bills. As a landmark birthday approaches, I stand on the brink of, once again, changing it all. From February I become a full-time writer. A real writer, not just a rearranger of press releases and garbled comments scribbled down in indecipherable Teeline shorthand. It's make or break time and there's no going back. That I live with a writer whom I love and who shares the same dreams will make the journey smoother, mentally, but a total nightmare, no doubt, financially. But sometimes, you have to give it your best shot lest you wake up an old man with the rain pouring down your back one day, wondering where it all went wrong. It won't go wrong though, not this time, I know it.

Anyway, hello everyone. It's nice to feel a part of something bigger than a computer on a desk and a tangled web of phone lines.