Who Am I?

I get the irony a little in writing this post.  But before I go into more of what I want to achieve I want you to know who I am and what I have experienced in my life.  Of course doing that this early means that I run the risk of not many people reading it but it is an important to get this out there so you know why I want to share my point of view.  In fact why I need to share my point of view because at this point in my life (I am a week away from turning 40) I look at the world and it makes me sad.  There are parts of my life that are great, but I can no longer look and say nothing about what I find troubling in the world.  What I hope is that this blog will grow and like minded people will join with me and discuss the points that I make and see what we can do, if anything, to change it.

I was born in Hobart, Tasmania on Saturday the 26th of January almost forty years ago.  I had a Mother and a Father and an older Brother.  I was the last child and that is how my family looked for most of my life.  I was born with anaemia and was a very pale child.  My very first photo upset my extended family so much that my Mother could not show it on the mantle when they came around as they said it was hard to work out where I began and the sheets finished!  Soon after birth though the condition went away and I became normal so to speak.  But what is normal?

My mother, my brother and his daughter Indiannah

My family moved to Burnie, Tasmania before I turned one and for my entire childhood I lived in Burnie or near Burnie.  When I was 4 we moved to a 5 acre farm in Elliott which is 20 kilometres away from Burnie and we spent ten years at that farm.  It was a great place to grow up, and it instilled rural values into me.  So what do I think that means because everyone has a different idea?

1. Community is all about knowing each other and helping out each other
2. You get an understanding of the cycle of life and how things interact to create that cycle
3. You build up a "have a go" attitude where you just try to solve things yourself
4. You build an excellent imagination and a sense of exploration

I went to a small school that took us from Kindergarten right through to Grade 10.  I only went to Grade 6 though and moved on to Burnie High School after that as it offered a better curriculum for me. We stayed in Elliott for 10 years before we moved back into Burnie and I stayed there until I moved out of home to my first job, working for the Australian Government.  I met my wife and travelled about various parts of Australia with my work.  At this time my Mother and Father separated and then we returned to Tasmania after a tragedy. 

This caused me to quit my job and finally take a hard look at what I was doing and change direction.  I went to Uni for around ten years and then took on a new job by happenstance teaching (I did not get an education degree at University, it was a Bachelor of Computing) senior secondary students.  My mother then passed away and I have been 4 years in the job teaching.  And it is at this point in my life that has brought me to writing this blog.

So there you have it, the very brief auto-biography.  There are gaping holes there which I am sure you can plainly see but I will explore them in connection with other things in the future.  Next week, for example, I will explore the tragedy I mentioned which is also the point where I gained my depression.  I will talk about this in relation to my depression and how it has been living with it for now over a decade.

I hope you join me next week, on my 40th birthday to take a look at the next post!