“Forever,” I reply with a smile.

I’m often asked how long I’m in Ireland when my American accent is revealed to a Dublin or Wicklow publican when ordering that first pint of the day. They’re often visibly confused, not expecting that sort of answer among the various American and other foreign tourists jockeying for a position at their bar. Then I casually explain, the lines very well-rehearsed as there have been plenty of “first pints of the day” since we landed here:

“My family and I moved here in the summer of 2024. Ireland was the obvious choice. I’m Irish by ethnicity; my ancestors left almost 200 years ago. But, I’ve been back on vacation many times since and we finally took the leap to relocate.”

“How are ye gettin’ on?”

“Absolutely love it, thanks. Wish I would have moved twenty years ago.”

Since that day in August 2024 (and perhaps before) I’ve been looking for a forum to express the myriad feelings of finally living in the land I’ve known so well since I first began singing Irish rebel and drinking songs at family gatherings at eight years old.

This isn’t a blog about the best places to visit (or drink) in Ireland, though I’m sure I’ll share a few perfect pints or vistas now and then. Nor is this intended to be an indictment of America and its seemingly insurmountable problems or a self-righteous catalogue of all the reasons I left. That has been done ad nauseum and it no longer interests me. This is a project for me to explore Irishness, living in “exile”, and questioning my own shifting sense of identity both as an expat and as a fifty year-old man in the middle of a number of transitions including those of a national, residential, professional, and personal nature.

Of course, I’m not really in “exile” per se. I am free to return to the US at any time. But it does make me think of a similar “exile” by one of my favorite writers, James Joyce. He voluntarily left Ireland seeking to escape the often oppressive conservative Catholic tradition and to find some sense of artistic freedom. In his debut, semi-autobiographical novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Joyce’s character, Stephen Dedalus, tells his friend Cranly:

“I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it call itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use—silence, exile and cunning.”

I’ve always loved that quote and I’ve found that it has very much resonated with me long before I even considered moving to the Emerald Isle. Today, I love it even more. Joyce left Ireland to seek some freedom and some clarity from a distance (he, of course, wrote obsessively about Ireland for the rest of his life). I have gone the opposite direction.

I am stepping into Ireland, itself a major transition in my life, in order to gain some perspective on the other transitions men of my age often face.

I do this as a personal project, as a “mode of life or art”, so to speak, and I thank you for joining me on this journey.

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