A brief introduction to me

Two score, five years, and about nine months ago I was born in the city of Cleveland, Ohio. Looking back at what I have undergone since then, I would divide the course of my life into four distinct (though obviously connected) periods: Years of Childhood and Adolescence (1963-1981); University Years (1981-1989); Years of Drift (1989-1995); Years of (Voluntary) Exile (1995-present). While each period contains its own special features, peculiarities, and traumas, the last and most recent (i.e., from 1995 to today) is probably the most readily graspable --at least on the surface -- by those just becoming acquainted with me. So I will begin with a brief overview of the past fifteen years.

In early 1995, living in the D.C. area and unable fo find even remotely challenging work, I responded to an ad in the Washington Post for English teachers to work in Korea. Though my academic background was in history, not language, and though I had virtually no pedagogical experience, this seemed to offer an interesting challenge -- more interesting and more challenging, certainly, than doing occasional temp jobs as an office clerk or furniture mover. So I applied to the agency which had placed the ad -- and by mid-February was aboard a flight for Seoul. Unfortunately, due to visa problems beyond my control (and caused, in fact, by the school for which I had agreed to work), I had to leave Korea after only three months. But this my initial exposure to teaching abroad sufficed to convince me that here, if far from an ideal profession, was something I could do tolerably well without unduly exacerbating my entrenched existential dissatisfaction (of which more -- much more -- in subsequent entries). Fourteen years and eight countries later, that conviction, though severely shaken from time to time, still stands.

Anyway, six weeks after returning to the States, I was headed overseas again -- this time across the Atlantic. One year in Slovakia was followed by five years in Hungary followed by one year in Latvia followed by six months back in Hungary followed by fourteen weeks in Thailand followed by two-and-a-half years in China followed by five months in Russia followed by another summer in Hungary followed by five months in Azerbaijan followed by six months in the Baltic states followed by one year in Mongolia. Through most of this period -- interrupted by only two brief visits to the U.S. -- I was teaching English, academic writing, and American studies, chiefly at the university level.

Though not exactly homesick after so much time away from the land of my passport, I did miss being in an environment where meeting people who shared my interests (as well as my language!) would be (I thought) a bit easier -- to say nothing of being able to enter a library the majority of whose holdings were in English. So on June 29, 2008, I departed Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, for my favorite American city, San Francisco, hoping to find a job there that would allow me to remain for a while. But six months of failing to find any long-term employment obliged me to put this particular ambition on indefinite hold. Accordingly, toward the end of 2008, I resumed my travels/travails abroad, in the same country where they had begun over fourteeen years before: Korea. This time around, hopefully, my stay will last longer than three months, while the overall duration of this second stage of my existence as a latter-day equivalent of the medieval wandering Jew could well prove another fifteen years . . . or more.

For better or worse, I don't know how closely my life expectancy adheres to the American average.