So I decided to start this blog. I will explain why I started it, it's kind of a long, convoluted story like many stories in my life, and the simple explanation is that the stories are the reason for the blog. And since folks that know me well, know that I am fond of explaining things in detail, I'm going to do that here. When I hear something I like to hear the details because I want as complete picture as possible so I can better understand whatever it is. Like most humans, I think that other people think like I do. In spite of copious evidence to the contrary, I still persist in this obviously false belief. Years ago as I was launching into a story, a good friend of mine said mostly in jest (I hope) "Ed, is this going to be another one of your long pointless stories?" You see, I'm doing it already. I'm going into a long explanation to explain why I give long detailed explanations to often simple questions. But I digress.
I moved to Poland in September of 2008. I was living in Germany, I got divorced and I met a lovely Polish lady, we talked, we met in person, and 2 years later we got married. Two weeks after that, I packed a few things from my desk, I quit my job as a civilian employee of the US Army in Heidelberg Germany, and I moved to Poland. I want you to know that it's killing me to not go into a huge amount of detail about all of those things but I am discipling my self not to. At some point I will write about that stuff another time.
One of the first things my new wife said to me was "What are you going to do for work here in Poland. You don't speak any Polish." So I told her that I would do what many ex-pats in a new country do, I'll teach English. Many people in many countries want to learn English, so fortunately for me this was a viable plan. My wife has lived in our little town, Słubice all of her life and because of her jobs she is very well connected and well known in the town. Sure enough, my wife asked around and about a week later I had my first student. He was a business man that ran a factory and he wanted to improve his English because of his job. Then I got a 2nd student, a high school student. I also did some research on the internet and I found a large private English school in a bigger city about 50 miles away. I sent them an email, they called me in for an interview and I got a job teaching there for 20 hours a week. So in my first few weeks in my new life I had gainful employment.
After teaching for a year in the school, I decided the long drive on crappy Polish roads, and due to some of the practices at the school, I decided to leave that job and just freelance in Słubice and the surrounding area. I had picked up a few more students in town while I was teaching at the school and I was confident I could get enough students to stay busy. And I did, I had more people that wanted lessons with me than I had time for them. I had high school kids, kids from the local campus of a large Polish university in a bigger city about 100 miles away, as well as students from a university across the river from us in the German city of Frankfurt-Oder. I also had a few doctors and other professionals that wanted to improve their English. Once I had been teaching for a little while, word got around that there was an American in town and people would call me asking about lessons.
When I was teaching at the school, we used books that were printed by British companies. They had stories and exercises to go with the stories, CDs to listen to, and levels from beginner to advanced, each with its own book. It was all quite structured and had some use because of that but it was also boring. So like a good teacher, I would expand on the material and tell some stories about my life and connect it to the lesson. The students liked that. I have a lot of stories because over the course of my life I never worked anywhere for longer than 6 years. And staying in one place for that long was a horrible experience. I usually would get bored or disgusted and change jobs every 2 or 3 years. I know many people don't do that but I've been doing it all of my life, so I'm used to it. In addition I like to travel and experience different places, the sights, the smells, the people, the culture and all that. I've lived in 4 different countries Europe and Asia, for a total of about 30 years. Living in other countries also made it easy to travel around to see many places. Of course I also collected many stories and I would tell these stories to my students.
After a few years teaching with the books, I found that the students were far happier when I told them stories about my life than they were with some made up story in the books. So I decided to chuck the books away and just talk to my students, and while we were talking I would explain some point about English grammar or correct their pronunciation, etc. After all, a language is a means to an end, the end obviously being communication. What better way to learn a language than to use it for its intended purpose and not just drill grammar and structure into their heads and bore them. This approach to learning a language isn't new, programs like Rosetta Stone and others use it. I like it, my students like it, and I've been doing it with some success for about 10 years now. My teacher's books and CDs are sitting on a dusty shelf in my man cave now.
I started to notice that my students were very interested in my stories. Many Polish people haven't travelled outside of their country and they loved to hear about strange places and cultures. Also because of the internet, Polish people, like people everywhere watch a lot of American films and TV shows, so they were very interested in hearing about life in the US. As time went on, now and then one of my students would tell me I should write a book about all of my experiences. I would also tell my new friends here something about my life and my travels and they would also tell me I should write a book. My wife, who has heard many of my stories, because I like to talk has repeatedly told me I should write a book. Recently an American ex-pat on Facebook, living in Japan that I have some contact with told me I should write a book. I was beginning to see a pattern here!
Since I was young, I always enjoyed writing. Not so much for school assignments although I usually got good grades on those. I did have a couple of writing assignments in elementary school that I could really stretch my young literary legs on. The first was in the 2nd grade. We had to write a short story about anything. In 2nd grade, short means 2 pages or less. So I wrote a story about a boy in a poor family that really wanted to learn to play the piano. His parents explained that they couldn't afford the lessons, much less a piano. The boy was very sad. Then somehow the father got a better job and they could afford piano lessons and even a piano, and the boy's dream came true and they all lived happily ever after. I was a pretty clever kid so I named my story "The Boy Who Wanted to Play the Piano". I got an 'A' for my effort so I was proud of myself as were my parents. They figured maybe they had the next Hemmingway on their hands. You know how parents can be. In the 6th grade we had an assignment to write our autobiography as though we were all grown up and retired. As a young boy I had, and I still do have passion for boats and ships and oceans and all that stuff. So I wrote about my imagined nautical career. I started as a teen and became a cabin boy on one of the last clipper ships to sail before steam propulsion made commercial sailing ships obsolete. I recounted my journey through the ranks to 1st mate, captain of a ship and ultimately the owner of a steamship company, and then retirement. My teacher liked my story very much and I did too. Again, I got an 'A'. I still have that story somewhere in a box of old stuff. Also, in the 4th and 5th grade I had the same teacher. The teacher would have a project every school year involving all of the students. We would write puppet plays, each make our own puppets and the backdrops, and then present the plays to the entire school. Because of my legendary writing skills from my 2nd grade magnum opus, I was chosen to write one of the 8 puppet plays. I also was chosen to operate the curtain on the little puppet theater for each play (Which was the genesis of my lifelong love for theater, particularly technical theater.) So I wrote my play in the 4th grade about the American naval hero, John Paul Jones. Of course, I played the role of Jones. I loved to draw ships so I made the backdrop as well. The following year, since I had experience and the play about John Paul Jones got rave reviews from the critics (mainly our teacher), I was chosen once again to write a play. This time I wrote about a submarine doing underwater research sometime in the distant future. Of course I had the role of the submarine captain. And I made the backdrop, and operated the curtain. It was a fun experience.
In spite of my early success as an author, when I got to high school I didn't write much. Maybe I had writers block, probably I just got lazy. I didn't care much for high school and didn't put a lot of effort into studying usually. My future as an author came to a screeching halt for many years. At some points, I would feel creative and start to write something but I never got more than a couple of pages. Finally in my golden years, after doing many things and having lived in a lot of places and having a lot of interesting experiences and meeting many interesting people, I thought I would give writing a try again. So many people have told me I should write about my life, and I'm starting to believe that it might be of some interest to other people. I thought I would try this blog thing to dip my toe in the water as it were.
So that's why you are seeing this. I figure I will write about this and that and some other things and see where it goes. I tell a pretty good story, I've been telling some of them for years. Writing a story is a different skill than verbally telling a story. I think if the stories are fundamentally good, then maybe I can convey them in writing as well as I do when speaking, we'll see. I don't only intend to tell stories about my life experiences. When I pretty much retired a couple of years ago I decided to rebrand myself as a philosopher. I have always liked to ponder the mysteries of life and existence. I've always been a big picture guy, I like to think globally. So I will write about some of my thoughts in that direction also. And I might write about almost anything. I will try to write often, I don't do much with my time anyway. I'm not sure how often I'll update here but I'll try to do it frequently. I am still kind of lazy sometimes so I won't promise anything. Feedback is appreciated and even criticism if it is polite and for a purpose. I hope you enjoy what I write, see you the next time! I have many stories to tell!
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