Hello intrepid internet voyager.
Thank you for peering in to my website in these early days. As you can see, there's not much to look at. This website is in its fledgling years. It's a feeble thing, croaking and gasping at its mother (me) for sustenance. I have some stories that I'll be uploading onto here periodically, but until then, thanks for stopping by!
This was an idea that came to me as I was sitting in the back seat of an uber one afternoon last year. The driver was a talker. You know the type. There was nothing coming from my end at all, but he was quite happy to talk himself hoarse.
"What do you do?" he said.
I told him I was a teacher. That killed half the trip there and then. He wasted no time in waxing lyrical about how noble a profession it was, and how his children attended a school that they thought was too strict, but he had told them they were lucky to have firm boundaries. I felt like we were on a wave-length then. I told him I taught at a very strict school. This was music to his ears. He spoke fondly of his teachers at school and how much he feared them. He mourned the day corporal punishment was outlawed. At that point, I felt our viewpoints diverged somewhat. Then, quite out of the blue, he asked me a question.
"What is your dream?" he said, looking me determinedly in his rear-view mirror.
"My dream?"
"Yes. For the future."
"I want to be a writer," I said, after a moments hesitation.
"What do you write?"
"Stories. Mostly fantasy. Nothing big yet, but I'm working on a novel."
"Has anyone read them?"
I thought about it for a moment. "No. Just me."
He shook his head, sage-like. "People should read them, you know. Tell you if you're terrible or not."
I laughed at the time. Forgot about it for half a year. Then, in a conversation over dinner, my fiancee mentioned it. A website. Where I should write things. Post them. A "get my writing out there" kind of venture. It was a command, not a suggestion.
I'm very grateful to her. And to my uber driver, whose name is lost to the sands of time. Thank you both; you dynamic duo. You aided in the creation of this little corner of the web, and gave my otherwise purposeless summer holiday some kind of direction.
All in all; three thank yous. To my uber driver, for planting the idea. To my fiancee, for making it happen. And to you, for reading this and anything else I happen to write. Terrible or not. I do this for all of you.
Sam O'Hanlon - August 2023
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