Author’s Note

By Amira Aleem

For the last three years, Andy McLean has been looking for something. A direction to his career, a new country to call home, a group of people to belong to and a purpose to everything he chases.

When Andy and I first spoke about this project, he was looking for a way to share his story. Although this reads like a “wander-the-world-and-find-my-soul” experience, it is in fact an honest journey of Andy’s struggles and successes along the way. It had been a busy and tumultuous few years between leaving his long-term employer and rejoining them three years later, involving change and anguish in equal measure.

For Andy, the search to find what and who were most relevant to him has been filled with extreme moments of love and miscalculations and circling back, only to find himself setting off in search again. Much of this process was based on connecting with people and natural environments away from the City on London.

Through my writing, I was looking to help people articulate what they had been through and share that with the world around them. I hope that through his story you are able to find your own messy experiences and piece together the pieces as he has.

In sharing Andy’s story, I have tried to write the lessons he has learnt, in the way that he has come to make sense of them. I hope you are able to take comfort in the realisation that, at the heart of it, we are all chasing something.

Andy McLean is all of us.

He is ambitious, creative, and intelligent, and has so much to give to the world around him. Yet, he is plagued by moments of self-doubt and the overwhelming need to find a place to belong. Andy’s story is about finding and believing, only to start the long process of losing and finding yourself again.

This is his story.