my preface

I have never felt like I’m from anywhere in particular. I mean this in a very literal way – my family of five has moved around a lot over the course of my life, from Asia, to Africa, then North America, and even in the last couple of years to the Persian Gulf and Southern Europe. I have an English mother and a Zimbabwean father, though to complicate things further my Dad is more of a Rhodesian and has therefore been a British citizen all his life. But when asked where I come from I always feel a bit dubious saying “Britain” or “the UK”, suddenly panicked that someone, a real Brit, might pop out from around the corner and start pop quizzing me on the lineage of the throne, Horatio Nelson, or what happened last week on Eastenders, as if any self-respecting English person has a requirement to know these things. But speak up at all about my African heritage, and I have to suffer through an awkward silence with this stranger asking me, watching the rusty cogs of their mind clicking slowly away before I follow it up with, “And no, he isn’t black.”

It’s tricky explaining where we’re from, and each sibling has a different way of dealing with it. My sister, the eldest, has a knack for adopting the indigenous accent of almost every place we’ve lived. After a couple of weeks she blends in seamlessly. My younger brother still speaks a very pure sort of English (in accent, if not in vocabulary…) but he’s sixteen and just returning to American schooling so our Mum can only hope he can tolerate being the different kid. As for me, I’ve been told I speak a sort of mutt, hybrid mixture that leads more than half the people who meet me for the first time to ask me which part of Australia I come from, even though I have never been to Australia.

But I’ve decided to be over this little identity crisis. What I come from is a loving family that’s become so incredibly close with every move we’ve made. Such a functional family is just about the most annoying thing that can happen to someone with writing aspirations, but I love them of course, and I don’t know why I worry so much about how to explain this geographical history of ours to people. What I’m going to focus on from now on is my future, for once not just because it’s impending but also because it’s quite bright and shiny too.

After the frustration of sending my resume out into the black hole of job search sites for months now and hearing almost nothing in return, I suddenly find myself, within the last week, employed by two different publishing companies. To say I’m over the moon about it is an understatement. I’ve barely sent them my acceptance emails, and already I feel the huge step I’m taking towards the next phase of my life – perhaps the start of my San Francisco years.

But until I can finally feel like my life belongs in one definite place, I still find myself in a limbo state, pulled in a dozen different directions. What I write here will be about my life during these in between days, spending every twilight looking over my adopted city by the bay.